
Class. 



GpightN?.. 



COPYRICHT DEPOSIT 



MY DEAR WELLS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



Patriotism and Popular Education 

With some Thoughts upon English work 
and English play, our evening amusements, 
Shakespeare and the condition of our 
theatres, slang, children on the stage, the 
training of actors, English politics, before 
the War, national training for national de- 
fence, war and design in nature, the 
League of Nations, the future world policy 
of America, capital and labour, religion, 
reconstruction, the great commandments, 
social prophets and social prophecy, com- 
petition and co-operation, the biologist and 
the social reformer, hand labour and brain 
labour, school teachers and ragpickers, 
internationalism, and many other interest- 
ing matters. 

The whole discourse being in the form of 
a letter addressed to 

The Right Hon. H. A. L. Fisher 
President of the British Board of Education 



E. P. DUTTON fcf COMPANY 




■>.-. 



© Life Pub. Co. Reproduced by permission. 

H. G. Wells (to starving Russian novelist): Your condition is deplorable, 
but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have abolished 
private property. 



MY DEAR WELLS 

BEING A SERIES OF LETTERS ADDRESSED BY 
HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

TO MR. H. G. WELLS 

UPON BOLSHEVISM, COLLECTIVISM, 

INTERNATIONALISM, AND THE 

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
681 FIFTH AVENUE 



Copyright, 1921, 
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved Li V *> A* (P 



H0U19 7I 

©CLA630365 



Printed in the United States of America 



PREFACE. 

My main object in writing this book has been to 
examine the soundness of the arguments which a 
popular writer uses in urging us to break up the 
present social order, and incidentally and conse- 
quentially to break up the British Empire. I have 
set myself to test the quality of his thinking, the 
texture of his reasoning, to question the value of 
his judgment. Before proceeding to make such 
fundamental changes in our social system as must 
immeasurably involve the destinies of hundreds of 
millions of mankind, before even considering the 
advisability of making these changes, it may save 
us much trouble if we first ask for credentials from 
those who advocate them. What are their quali- 
fications for advising us on these supreme matters? 

In a London journal of the widest circulation, 
an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Wells recently 
claimed that he possessed an almost superhuman 
sagacity and foresight in dealing with the social and 
political problems of our time. All through the war 
and since, Mr. Wells has diagnosed the world situa- 
tion almost month by month, has laid out vast Inter- 
national schemes, has counselled various policies to 



vi Preface 

the world's statesmen and rulers, has issued mani- 
festoes and forecasts innumerable. Looking round 
upon the world today, how do its salient facts 
and conditions accord with the successive estimates 
and forecasts which Mr. Wells has made? How 
many of his forecasts have been fulfilled? His en- 
thusiastic admirer acclaimed Mr. Wells as "the 
man who saw things coming." How many of the 
things that Mr. Wells "saw coming" have actually 
come to pass? How many of the tremendous things 
that have actually come to pass, did Mr. Wells "see 
coming"? 

Before pulling the British Empire to pieces, we 
may surely take the precaution to ask what authority 
of careful thought and stability of informed judge- 
ment, are possessed by those who are seeking to 
draw us into these vast and irrevocable commit- 
ments. We have among us a group of "thinkers" 
and writers whom I call "The Haters of England." 
They always "think" against their own country. If 
there is sedition and revolt in any part of the Em- 
pire, they stir it up. If there is trouble and unrest 
at home, they foment it. Most of them are active 
fervent Internationalists with respect to their own 
country, but with respect to any country that is 
embroiled with England, they are active fervent 
Patriots. During the war they were worth many 
army corps to Germany. Now that the war has 
left us a legacy of new insecurities and perils, now 



Preface vii 

that it is a first necessity that our nation should 
gather itself in one great unity of aim and effort 
to ward off disaster, these haters of England are 
busy spreading disaffection and disunion both in our 
internal and in our foreign affairs. 

Mr. Wells is one of the most popular and influen- 
tials of these "thinkers" and writers who "think" 
and write against England. It has been my chief 
endeavour in the following pages, to test the quality 
of his "thinking", its fibre and cogency, to demand 
his credentials that they may be vizeed by the final 
court of appeal. 

The series of papers entitled "Russia in the 
Shadows" which Mr. Wells has recently published, 
afforded me the chance to examine his views upon 
Bolshevism, and to dissect the arguments by which 
he accorded to it a general and sympathetic support. 
My replies to those papers, which originally ap- 
peared in the "London Evening Standard" and the 
"New York Sunday Times," are here reprinted, and 
form the substance of the first eight letters in this 
volume. The situation in Russia has changed con- 
siderably in the last few months, but this does not 
in the least affect the quality of Mr. Wells's think- 
ing and arguments, nor of my criticism of them. 

The enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Wells, in the 
same article that I have quoted, made the further 
claim on his behalf — "Wells today is thinking for 
half Europe." 



viii Preface 

It is daily becoming more painfully evident that 
the great masses of the people in all countries are 
unable, or are too much occupied, to think for them- 
selves upon any question that requires them to pur- 
sue a train of abstract and exact reasoning. They 
are only too glad to escape from so prolonged and 
painful an effort, and to get their thinking done for 
them by professional thinkers for other people. 
When this vicarious thinking is analysed, much of 
it is found to be a flatulent compound of vasty vague 
phrases and enticing catch-words. These are put 
into general circulation and passed from mouth to 
mouth, flattering the self-esteem of the users by 
giving them the illusion that they are solving difficult 
social and political problems. How many of those 
who used the phrase "making the world safe for 
democracy" asked themselves what it meant? By 
dint of constantly repeating it, men grew to believe 
that they were putting an end to war. 

My secondary and ancillary object in writing this 
book has been to test the value and soundness of 
this vicarious thinking that is being turned out in 
such wholesale quantities by its accredited purveyors 
for its millions of consumers. In the "London Sun- 
day Express" of December 20, 1920, Mr. Wells 
replied to Mr. Winston Churchill in a paper called 
"The Anti-Bolshevik Mind." In itself Mr. Wells's 
paper is of no great account, and the circumstances 
of its publication may be dismissed. But in "The 



Preface ix 

Anti-Bolshevik Mind" Mr. Wells offered, what 
seemed to me, a characteristic and extensive illus- 
tration of loose and confused "thinking' 1 for other 
people. In this respect it has a permanent illuminat- 
ing interest for people who think for themselves. 
For this reason, and from this point of view, I have 
minutely dissected "The Anti-Bolshevik Mind" from 
beginning to end, almost sentence by sentence. 

Further, in the course of that paper, Mr. Wells 
advanced and exploited his theories to such a 
length that he gave me the chance of examining each 
of his cardinal tenets and doctrines upon its merits. 
Concurrently then, and without digressing from the 
main and secondary objects which I had in view, I 
have in the following pages inquired into the possi- 
bilities of Collectivism and Internationalism as 
workable forms of government, and also into the 
eternally perplexing problem of the distribution of 
Wealth. In the ninth letter onwards, I have dis- 
puted with Mr. Wells on all these closely interknit 
questions. 

I hope my readers will find throughout these 
letters an underchain of carefully sustained argu- 
ment, and thereupon I finally rest my case. But in 
forming their opinions upon all these supreme mat- 
ters, the great majority of men are guided, not so 
much by argument, however clear and irrefragable, 
as by their sympathies, emotions, and prejudices, and 
chiefly by their immediate individual or class in- 



x Preface 

terests. They believe not what facts tell them, but 
what they wish to believe. 

Mr. Wells's theories appear to me to be not only 
inconsistent, ill considered, and unworkable, but 
apart from the tragic mischief and misery they may 
cause, they present themselves to me as a bundle of 
crazy but delightfully amusing absurdities. In 
many passages throughout these letters, I have 
adopted a tone and method of controversy which is 
perhaps not to be commended for general imitation, 
but which may prove to be the most effectual for 
achieving the objects I have in view. Those objects 
are of such magnitude and importance that I should 
not hesitate to use any form of controversy which 
might best serve to call attention to them, and best 
serve to arrest and persuade the nine out of ten 
of us who are impatient of solemn formal argument. 
If any reader thinks that I have occasionally been 
a little careless of the courtesies of controversy, I 
beg him to remember that ridicule is sometimes the 
most penetrating and most conclusive form of ar- 
gument. 

For the reasons I have given, I hope these letters 
may be found to have something more than the 
ephemeral interest which attaches to a sterile per- 
sonal controversy on some passing question of the 
day, whose flavour the next morning is as stale as 
the dead end of a half-smoked cigar. 

If we are to overturn the present social order, 



Preface xi 

and break up the British Empire, let us first be sure 
of our grounds, and let those who can think for 
themselves, search into the credentials of those who 
are thinking for other people, and who are popularly 
accepted as qualified advisers on matters of life or 
death to our nation and to all civilised mankind. 
Henry Arthur Jones. 

March 30, 1921. 

New York City. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

MY DEAR WELLS was practically ready for publica- 
tion three months ago or more. The Publishers hesitated 
to put the book before the public, however, owing to 
objections raised by Mr. H. G. Wells to the accuracy of 
some of its supposed statements. 

A copy of the book was at once forwarded to Mr. Wells 
by the Publishers for his examination, with an offer to 
withhold the volume from publication if Mr. Wells would 
point out any matter therein which was either untrue or 
libelous or which offended in any way against good taste. 

Having had from Mr. Wells no answer to or acknowl- 
edgment of their offer, they feel that there is now no 
longer any reason for postponing publication of this ex- 
ceedingly important critical examination of Mr. Wells' 
theories. 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
New York 
October 31st, 1 92 1. 



CONTENTS 



LETTER I. 
Mr. Wells Will Take a Trip to Russia 

LETTER II. 

Mr. Wells Packs Up and Starts . . . 

LETTER III. 

Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrograd . 



LETTER IV. 
Strange Things Get into Mr. Wells's Head 19 «—-**"' 

LETTER V. 
Mr. Wells Invents a New Kind of Honesty 28 %***'" 

LETTER VI. 

Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 42 ^^ 

LETTER VII. 
Mr. Wells, the Sailorman, and the Stolen Teapot ... 56 

LETTER VIII. 
Mr. Wells Becomes Even More Preposterous 73 

LETTER IX. 
The Fabian Beanfeast 95 

LETTER X. 
The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 112 

LETTER XI. 
The Foghorn Tunes Up 129 

xiii 



xiv Contents 

LETTER XII. page 

The Flapper Flaps and the Foghorn Howls ..... 149 

LETTER XIII. 
The Tortoise and the Elephant 166 

LETTER XIV. 
Fallacies Galore > >; > . 180 

LETTER XV. 
The Interceptors of Wealth > 194 

LETTER XVI. 
Arguing with a Turnip . .... 221 

LETTER XVII. 
Gathering up the Fragments 242 

LETTER XVIII. 
The Wells League 251 

LETTER XIX. 
A Challenge 259 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

These letters were written during the au- 
tumn and winter of 1 920-1921. 

The earlier ones appeared in the London 
Evening Standard and the New York Sun- 
day Times. The author gratefully acknowl- 
edges his indebtedness to the editors of these 
journals for their permission to publish them 
in this volume. 

New York, N. T. 
April 4, IQ2I& 



MY DEAR WELLS 



" 'E dunnow where 'e are." 

Popular English Music-hall Song 

"I'll tickle your catastrophe." 

Falstaff, Henry IV, Part II 



MY DEAR WELLS 

LETTER ONE. 

MR. WELLS WILL TAKE A TRIP TO 
RUSSIA. 

My Dear Wells, — 

In a recent article in a morning journal, which, I 
am sure, must have caused you that intense annoy- 
ance which we all feel when we find ourselves inju- 
diciously praised in the newspapers — in that article 
the inspired writer, after an ascription to you of a 
sovereign comprehension of human affairs, and a 
superhuman sagacity in dealing with them, went on 
to declare that "Wells to-day is thinking for half 
Europe." 

Mr. Archibald Spofforth, who was reading the 
article aloud to me, put it down at this point and 
very ungraciously muttered, "Now we know why 
Europe is in such a mess." 

I am afraid that Spofforth is incurably prejudiced 
against you. I told him bluntly that he was guilty 
of over-statement. I would not allow that you are 
entirely responsible for the disorders and delusions 



2 My Dear Wells 

of thought that are everywhere gnawing at the 
foundations of ordered government, and driving the 
peoples towards civil war and anarchy. 

I was, however, obliged to admit that your ad- 
vocacy of Bolshevism as the way of salvation for 
mankind, your laudation of its leaders as farseeing 
statesmen, "shining clear," "profoundly wise," im- 
measurably more competent to guide the destinies of 
a nation than such "pretentious bluffers" as Mr. 
Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil — I was obliged to 
admit to Spofforth that if you are indeed thinking 
for that very large number of people in Europe who 
are unable to think for themselves, you are likely 
to lead them to great disaster. 

And now you are going to Russia to find out the 
facts for yourself. Is that necessary? 

We have abundant information about the state of 
that country, A great cloud of faithful witnesses 
have brought us full and unimpeachable evidence. 
Who in England except yourself is unacquainted with 
Russian conditions? Who except yourself has not 
too full and too dreadful a knowledge of the terror 
that reigns there ; all the securities and sanctities of 
civilised life abolished; all the spiritual and all the 
material possessions of the people seized and es- 
cheated, and scattered in the equality of the dust; 
sweated labour, gagged and fettered against all com- 
plaints and strikes, driven to its daily twelve-hour 
treadmill; a ruthless militarism, more brutal than 



Will Take a Trip to Russia 3 

the German, hounding its ragged, famished hordes 
to destroy Western civilisation; a junta of des- 
peradoes coining the blood of wretched peasants 
into gold to send to England to blind and drug our 
workmen, and to raise them into insurrection against 
their own means of livelihood; the very shadow 
and memory of Liberty banished from the land — 
since this old earth spun on its axis, has ever such 
a cry and tale of horror gone up to heaven, or has 
heaven looked down upon such a bloody, sickening 
spectacle of man's inhumanity to man? 

These are the facts about Russia, my dear Wells. 
And you will go there and ascertain them for your- 
self. 

You have compared our own rulers with the lead- 
ers of Bolshevism. You have found our English 
statesmen to be "ignorant and limited men" — 
"crudely ignorant of the world of modern ideas." 

The world of modern ideas ! 

In Russia you will find your world of modern 
ideas in full working operation. When you come 
back I would like to have a little talk with you about 
your world of modern ideas. 

It is not by your modern ideas that the Russian 
people will be dragged out of their putrid cesspool 
of famine, pestilence and anarchy. It is only by the 
observance of those great unchanging rules of life 
and conduct, those sovereign laws of communal and 
national well-being, eternally fixedy and as old as the 



4 My Dear Wells 

world itself, whereby through all time past nations 
have established themselves in peace and prosperity 
and happiness — it is only by obedience to these un- 
changing, primal laws that Russia will be rescued 
from her long agony, and that England will be ar- 
rested in her progress towards social rebellion and 
civil war. 

You have been so much occupied with your mod- 
ern ideas, my dear Wells, that I fear you have for- 
gotten the existence of these great primal laws. Yet 
they shine aloft like stars. When you come back 
from Russia I should like to bring them to your 
attention, and to challenge you to deny their opera- 
tion. 

It is claimed for you that you are "thinking for 
half Europe." Ah, they need somebody to think 
for them, these blind, helpless, tortured masses ! 

But I do most frankly question your competence 
to think for those who are unable to think for them- 
selves. In my "Patriotism and Popular Education" 
I examined in detail your scheme for the Interna- 
tional Government of Africa. You will remember 
that you regenerated the whole continent in five 
minutes by giving it an International Constitution on 
paper. It was all so easy — on paper. 

By some such means I suppose you will regenerate 
Russia. You will find it equally easy — on paper. 

Well, go to Russia. 

Yet I could wish that you had chosen England for 



Will Take a Trip to Russia 5 

your spiritual home rather than Russia. What is 
it that drives you and so many Englishmen to hate 
this dear, kind, blundering, stupid Mother of ours? 

You have declared your preference for Russia 
and Bolshevism. I once knew a man who had a 
good cellar of rich vintage wines in his own house. 
Yet, instead of drawing upon it, he would go tippling 
at dirty little public-houses. I knew another man 
who had a sweet, pretty, faithful little wife, yet, in- 
stead of staying at home with her, he would go after 
draggled creatures in the streets. 

Well, go to Russia. Let us have some further 
speech when you come back. 

Your faithful, and I hope not too candid, friend, 
Henry Arthur Jones. 

P. S. — If I were you, I wouldn't let your friends 
credit you with too much capacity for thinking for 
other people. Spofforth, who is always at my elbow 
with mal-hhpropos suggestions, has just remarked 
that if you are thinking for half Europe, it doesn't 
leave you much time to think for yourself. 

1 6th September, 1920. 

Mr. Wells replied to the above letter, and some 
further correspondence passed, the general tenor 
of which may be gathered from Letter 2. 



LETTER TWO. 
MR. WELLS PACKS UP AND STARTS. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I accept such terms as "liar," "excited imbecile," 
"silly ranter," "hasty, ill-trained mind," and the 
other elegancies of epithet which you apply to me — 
I accept them most cordially, most gratefully, as 
evidences of your method of controversy. I will 
treasure them and pay them the same respect that I 
pay to your social philosophy. 

To come to the facts. You accuse me of twisting 
and garbling your statements because I quoted you 
as saying that the Bolshevist leaders are "shining 
clear" and "profoundly wise." You don't deny 
that you did call them "shining clear;" but you 
explained that this applied only to the one mat- 
ter of making peace with the Hohenzollerns. 
It is strange that you should applaud them in 
this matter, when at the most critical period of 
the war you were urging us to make peace with un- 
defeated Germany under the Hohenzollerns. You 
will remember I had to curb your zeal when you ad- 
vised England to throw herself on the neck of her 
undefeated enemy. 

6 



Mr. Wells Packs Up and Starts 7 

So you say that the Bolshevist leaders were "shin- 
ing clear" on this one point only. In that matter, if 
indeed they were shining clear, I gladly allow that 
they were far more "shining clear" than yourself. 

You do not seem to qualify your praise of them 
as "profoundly wise," or to limit your admiration 
for them in that respect. You impute dishonesty to 
me because I took the general sense and tenor of 
your article, and did not, in a limited space, deal 
minutely with every particular. I am ready to deal 
minutely with every one of these minor points, these 
qualifications of your plain statements — if the editor 
of the "Evening Standard" thinks it worth while to 
give me the space to vex the public any further with 
them. 

Meantime I repeat with the utmost emphasis that 
I can employ, that your entire article is one continued 
laudation of the Bolshevist leaders, and their far- 
seeing statesmanship, to the depreciation of our Eng- 
lish statesmen. Will you face that simple issue? It 
is the only main issue that I raised in my letter. I 
now put it again to you in the plainest way. 

Your article in the "Daily Mail" of January 15, 
191 8, is easily accessible. You do not abjure it. 
You defend and even reinforce it. I invite and 
request the fullest comparison of that article with my 
letter to you in the "Evening Standard" of Septem- 
ber 16, 1920. 

If by dint of argument, persuasion, search, adver- 



8 My Dear Wells 

tisement, or by any other means you can find one 
single man in this country who, having read your 
article and my comment upon it, will come forward 
and say that, on the great main issue that I have 
raised, I have misrepresented you, or unfairly stated 
your opinion of the Bolshevist leaders — if you can 
find such a man and bring him forward, why, in that 
case, my dear Wells, I will pay him the same atten- 
tion that I am paying to you. I will deal with him 
candidly, as I am dealing with you — and even more 
exhaustively. 

After all your depreciation of English statesmen 
and diplomatists as "pretentious bluffers" ("Daily 
Mail," January 30, 1918), "crudely ignorant per- 
sons" guilty of vast general incompetence in man- 
aging our national affairs, it seems that your chief 
indictment against them, the head and front of their 
offending, is that our Ambassador in St. Petersburg 
did not know Russian. If you will inquire I think 
that you will find that, with one or two rare excep- 
tions, no foreign Ambassador in St. Petersburg has 
known Russian. It is not a great matter, except in 
your estimation. Disraeli did not know French. 
That did not prevent him being a great diplomatist. 
Will you kindly look up the point about foreign 
Ambassadors knowing Russian? As it is your main 
charge against English statesmanship, you may as 
well take care to stand upon firm ground. 

Another point. You claimed that the Bolshevist 



Mr. Wells Packs Up and Starts 9 

leaders were "trying to end aggressive militarism in 
the world forever." They believe that they can do 
this by mental work, by propaganda — that is, by 
words. Isn't that the fundamental fallacy of Inter- 
nationalists and Pacifists ? They think they can gov- 
ern and regenerate the world by a committee, by 
International paper constitutions, such as the one 
you devised for the government and regeneration of 
the continent of Africa. It is so easy — on paper. 

And now, my dear Wells, I must not detain you 
any further. You are busy packing up for Russia. 
Let us have some further speech on all these matters 
when you come back. 

Your sincere well wisher, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

P. S. — By the way, you ask me if I don't think 
that the Bolshevists are "straight." No, I don't, 
my dear Wells. Do you? In that case I do homage 
to the generous simplicity of your mind. But per- 
haps we attach different meanings to the word 
"straight." 

17th September, 1920. 

To this letter Mr. Wells made the strange reply 
that I did not understand the use of inverted com- 
mas, and that therefore discussion with me was 
impossible. When Mr. Wells is pressed home in 
argument, his retort is apt to be inscrutable and 
incoherent. H. A. J. 



LETTER THREE. 

MR. WELLS FINDS ORDER IN PETRO- 
GRAD. 

My Dear Wells, — 

So you are back in England. I thought it possible 
that you might be offered some high advisory post 
in Russia, which your love of Bolshevist Government 
would constrain you to accept. For in that country 
your International theories are being translated into 
facts, and the general condition of affairs seems to 
call for constant superintendence from yourself. 

You have returned to our shores, and in an inter- 
view you tell us that you have had a very interesting 
time. It looks likely that we are going to have a 
very interesting time in England, and something of 
the same sort of interesting time that they are having 
in Russia. 

I notice that you summarise the conditions in 
Russia in four words: "Hunger, want, but order." 
This seems to imply that if only order is maintained 
the hunger and the want are matters of secondary 
importance. What we are concerned to know is: 
"How much hunger? How much want?" and above 



Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrograd 11 

all: "What kind of order prevails in Russia 
to-day ?" 

We have evidence heaped mountain high that the 
hunger and want in Russia are unimaginable in their 
horror and their extent; that marasmus and pesti- 
lence are sweeping the land, and are only dwindling 
as the dwindling population offers them fewer vic- 
tims. Tell me, what is the population of Petrograd * 
to-day compared with its population before the 
war? What will it be when its doomed inhabitants 
have paid their further toll to frost and starvation 
in the coming winter ? Will you dismiss these ques- 
tions as negligible and impertinent in view of the 
dominating fact that "order" reigns in Petrograd? 

What kind of order? You say: "We have been 
rather amused to read of disturbances and insur- 
rections." Who are the "we" who were "amused" 
to read of disturbances and insurrections? You and 
Lenin? Or is the whole population of Petrograd 
rocking with laughter at the bare idea of disturb- 
ances and insurrections in their well-ordered and 
disciplined city? You will scarcely say that dis- 
turbances and insurrections have not taken place. 
Rather serious ones, eh? Not only in Petrograd, 
but all over the land, plunging the whole population 
in terror, misery, bloodshed, and ruin, and sacrific- 
ing countless thousands of innocent lives? But 

* It has recently been estimated that the present population of 
Petrograd (March, 1921) is not much over a third of the population 
in 1 9 14. 



12 My Dear Wells 

those disturbances and insurrections have been sub- 
dued. Now that order reigns, the very thought of 
them is amusing. . . . O vastly amusing, damnably 
amusing, I should say. 

What kind of order? How was it established? 
How is it maintained? 

You return to England in good time. Will you 
tell the workers of England — those workers, many 
of whom were two years ago in the trenches, ready 
to die for you and for me — will you tell the workers 
of England that the order now maintained in Petro- 
grad is the kind of order that you desire them to 
live under? An enforced twelve-hour day, on wages 
on starvation level; the right to strike, nay, the 
right to murmur or complain denied them under 
pain of death; free speech more cruelly suppressed 
and punished than under the worst tyranny the 
earth has known — will you tell the workers of 
England that this is the kind of order you wish them 
to establish in our own country? 

Be sure that it is the kind of order which inevitably 
follows any attempt to govern a country upon inter- 
national proletarian principles. Do you recommend 
it to us at the present moment? 

How was this order established in Russia? By 
machine-guns at every strategic point; by shooting 
every one who opposed; by wholesale robbery, 
massacre, and imprisonment ; by inflicting transcend- 



Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrogradj 13 

ent agonies and privations upon the whole people; 
by crimes and infamies and cruelties innumerable, 
indescribable, beyond all picturing. 

Do you still advise the workers of England to 
establish international order in this country by these 
methods? For by no other methods can it be estab- 
lished. Oh, be very sure of that! 

How is this order maintained? By the more and 
more rigorous employment of the same methods 
whereby it was established. Did you read the speech 
of Comrade Martoff at the conference of German 
Socialists a few days ago? He dared to arraign 
this order established in Petrograd, to proclaim it 
as a bloody, pitiless despotism, the devilish gaoler 
and destroyer of Russian liberty and national hope 
and life. 

That is how order is maintained in Petrograd. 

Comrade Martoff has had a much longer and 
closer experience than yourself of this order that 
reigns in Petrograd. He has lived and suffered 
under it, and knows it through and through. You 
were in Russia something just over a fortnight, I 
believe. You will claim that, with your astonishing 
capacity for formulating political theories, and im- 
posing them upon mankind, a fortnight is ample 
time for you to get a grip of the whole situation, 
and to shape a nation's destinies accordingly. 

If it came to a pinch, and I knew you were in good 



14 My Dear Wells 

form, I would back you to bring out a new Consti- 
tution, or a new religion, for any country or conti- 
nent, in less than a week. Don't distrust yourself. 
I know you can do it. Why, a year or two ago you 
whipped out a brand new International Constitu- 
tion for the whole continent of Mid-Africa in a fort- 
night. It is true that it was a paper Constitution, 
and that it wouldn't work for five minutes. Still, 
you did it. It is true, also, that your International 
Constitution for Mid-Africa illustrated the funda- 
mental and eternal fallacies of International govern- 
ment and was in itself a perfect little cameo con- 
demnation of Internationalism. Do you wish me 
to re-examine it and prove this statement? 

To return to Comrade Martoff and the order that 
reigns in Petrograd. Comrade Martoff, seemingly 
a good Socialist and Internationalist like yourself, 
denounces and curses the order that reigns in 
Petrograd. He finds nothing amusing in it. But 
then he has lived under it, and you will allow that 
in the matter of lengthened observation and expe- 
rience you are a mere week-end tripper compared 
with Comrade Martoff. 

You had a very interesting time, you say, not 
without amusement. Among the interesting and 
amusing things you saw, did you acquaint yourself 
with the conditions of childbirth in Russia under 
the present order that reigns there? Did you hap- 
pen to observe a dreadful type of baby that Russian 



Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrograd 15 

mothers are bringing into the world; starved in the 
womb, wizened, atrophied? 

The babies are perishing by thousands, and those 
that miserably survive shall bear witness all their 
lives to the effects of the order that now reigns in 
Petrograd. 

That order, you allow, is accompanied by hunger 
and want. You will scarcely counsel our English 
workers to embrace International theories for the 
sake of the hunger and want that they bring to the 
nations that put them into practice. But you seem 
to imply that the hunger and want must be endured 
for the sake of the order that is established under 
International government. On this point you have 
not yet made yourself clear. Indeed, you said: "I 
have seen so much that I have not yet digested what 
I have seen." Well, digest it as you may, human- 
ity has not stomach for it. 

However, it is announced that in a few days you 
will have digested what you saw in your fortnight's 
trip to Russia, and you are going to give us "one 
of the most thrilling narratives of recent years." 

Already we have been "thrilled" — and re-thrilled, 
and over-thrilled, and thrilled again by what has 
happened in Russia. We have no further power of 
response to "thrills," What we are anxious to hear 
is whether your fortnight's trip to Russia leaves you 
to form the same opinion of the present Govern- 
ment that Comrade Martoff has formed with his 



16 My Dear Wells 

incomparably greater experience and opportunities 
of pronouncing a judgement upon it. Do you agree 
with Comrade Martoff, or do you not? 

At this grave moment, when a large body of 
English workers are hesitating, would you counsel 
them to pay the same price for a revolution that the 
workers of Russia paid for it? Would you counsel 
them to pay a tenth, a hundredth part of that price? 
Answer me that. 

For believe me, my dear Wells, some such price 
we shall have to pay for International proletarian 
Government if we have it in England. 

As I have clearly shown — and I beg you to ex- 
amine my arguments and to refute them if you can — 
there is but one question before every English- 
man to-day — International or Patriotic Government. 
Every other question, social, industrial, financial, 
economic, political, falls into and is resolved in that 
one question. Till that primal, dividing question 
is finally decided by our nation we shall but toss and 
blindly defeat ourselves in ever-growing unrest, 
social disorder and social disintegration. 

With regard to this one supreme question — In- 
ternational or Patriotic Government — and keeping 
in view the facts that you have learned in your 
fortnight's trip to Russia, where it is in full working 
operation, you have the proverbial choice of taking 
one of three courses : — 

I. You can frankly declare that International 



Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrograd" 1 7 

Proletarian Government is a hideous failure. Per- 
haps this is too much to expect from you at present. 
You will wait till further facts and disasters more 
clearly reveal it to you. 

2. You can dodge the plain questions I have put 
to you, hedge a little bit, or a great deal, according 
as circumstances or your convictions may make it 
prudent or advisable for your reputation as a po- 
litical thinker, who is thinking for half Europe. 

3. You can triumphantly proclaim that Interna- 
tional Proletarian Government is a success in Rus- 
sia, and that the hunger and want which are in- 
separable from it are worth enduring for the sake 
of attaining the beneficent order that now reigns in 
Petrograd. 

Which of these courses will you take? 

When you left for Russia we were engaged in a 
controversy which you abruptly closed on the plea 
that I did not understand the use of inverted com- 
mas, and that therefore it was impossible to argue 
with me. I am quite willing to submit the matter 
of the inverted commas to any impartial judge of 
inverted commas. But I was under the impression 
that we were arguing about those great first prin- 
ciples of civilised government upon which the se« 
curity and prosperity of all nations depend. 

I am anxious to resume the controversy with you 
on these more important matters. Let it not distress 
you that you find it impossible to argue with me. I 



18 My Dear Wells 

will continue the controversy all alone, and will 
furnish the necessary arguments for us both. Au 
revoir. 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
26th October, 1920. 



LETTER FOUR. 

STRANGE THINGS GET INTO MR. 
WELLS'S HEAD. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I hope that it will cause you a pleasurable emotion 
to know that the coal strike has delayed my de- 
parture from England for a few days. This enables 
us to keep in touch with each other, while I examine 
your opening account of what is happening in Russia. 

I have never known a man so determined to ex- 
pose the fallacies of Internationalism as yourself. 
You might have rested content with your masterly 
arraignment of International government in that 
wonderful paper Constitution you drew up for Mid- 
Africa, so full of an ironic significance — which per- 
haps you scarcely perceived. But having furnished 
us with an admirable theoretical condemnation of 
Internationalism, you proceed to make a trip to 
Russia in order to show us what Internationalism is 
like when it puts its theories into practice. 

Your description of Russian conditions, sickening 
and heart-breaking as it is, adds nothing to what we 
knew of them. We have supped full of these hor- 
rors. They have been rehearsed to us ad nauseam 
19 



20 My Dear Wells 

by scores of travellers and residents who have had a 
much longer, more vivid, more poignant experience 
of these dreadful realities than yourself. You might 
have stayed at home and verified the overwhelmng 
evidence already brought to us from Russia. But 
you would go there and see these things for yourself. 
Well, you have seen them, and you confirm our 
general knowledge of the hopeless misery, oppres- 
sion, famine, disease, and despair that daily tighten 
their hold upon the masses of the Russian people. 

We are all in substantial agreement about the 
facts. We accept your summary of them as correct, 
so far as it goes. No eye can survey the boundless 
misery and horror that prevail in Russia. No pen 
can describe them. Pity has drained her eyes, and 
has no more tears to shed. Let us make one shud- 
dering guess at the illimitable dimensions of this 
abomination of the earth, and then take your de- 
scription of it as a faint image of something too vast 
to comprehend, too monstrous to imagine. 

With this impression in our minds, let us seek for 
some interpretation of the ghastly facts that you 
have related to us. How has the present condition 
of Russia been brought about? 

In my last letter, I pointed out to you that you 
had a splendid chance of rehabilitating your reputa- 
tion as a political thinker, by frankly declaring that 
International Proletarian Government has proved 
itself to be a hideous failure. I cannot but think 



Strange Things Get Into His Head 21 

you would have been wise to take that chance. You 
would have had all the facts on your side. I own 
that I did not expect you would fall in with my sug- 
gestion. You have written so much to prove that 
International Government by the proletariat is the 
panacea for all the ills that afflict this planet, that it 
was too much to hope you would change your 
opinion, merely because it happened to be opposed 
to all the crying and salient facts. 

Therefore I pointed out to you a second course. 
You could let yourself down gently, hedge and palter 
with this remorseless question that threatens to 
strangle every nation that cannot solve it aright, 
and that will allow no nation to have peace and 
security until it is solved. You have not definitely 
taken that second course. 

I further pointed out to you that you had a third 
course — to proclaim boldly that International Pro- 
letarian Government had answered all your expecta- 
tions, fulfilled all your prophecies, and that the 
present condition of Russia is a triumphant justifi- 
cation of your theories. In presence of the universal 
misery, bankruptcy, disease, and starvation that you 
have pictured you could scarcely take this third 
course. But in your recent paper you go as near to 
it as you dare. You evidently lean towards it, and 
you would whole-heartedly adopt it if it were not 
for the thousand damnable facts that thunder its 
refutation. So what do you do? You admit the 



22 My Dear Wells 

facts; indeed, you dilate and enlarge upon them; 
then you try to explain them away in a sense that is 
favourable to Bolshevist government. 

Let us examine your explanation. You contend 
that the present terrible condition of Russia is not 
the result of Bolshevist rule, but of "Capitalism," 
"European Imperialism," and an "atrocious block- 
ade." 

You allow that Capitalism built the great cities 
of Russia. Under Communism their population has 
shrunk to about half its former numbers, is still 
diminishing, and is living in progressive misery and 
starvation. Further, the Communist Government 
is seeking to trade with England. Now that it has 
almost destroyed its own capital it is begging 
capitalist England to bring it capital to start its in- 
dustries again. 

With regard to Imperialism, which I am not here 
concerned to uphold, tell me what Imperial State has 
governed its helpless people with such ruthless 
tyranny and cruelty as the present rulers of Russia? 
Under what Imperial State has there been anything 
approaching such famished misery and universal 
impoverishment as you have lately witnessed. I ask 
you to explain by your theory, how it is that now 
Imperialism has been removed these terrible condi- 
tions are progressive; that they increase in severity 
and horror in the degree and according to the 
length of time that the Russian people are removed 



Strange Things Get Into His Head 23 

from the consequences of Imperial Government, 
and as they pass under the rule of the present Gov- 
ernment and live under the operation of Communist 
laws? Ponder this question, my dear Wells. 

As for the blockade, without pressing the argu- 
ment that it was necessary to stay the tide of Bolshe- 
vism from flooding Europe, it can scarcely be main- 
tained that the privations and hunger caused by the 
blockade have been at all comparable with the priva- 
tions and hunger caused by the Communist law, 
which forces the peasants to deliver food at regulated 
prices, and thus, by taking from them the reward of 
their labour, takes from them also all incentive to 
work when they have supplied their own wants. 
There is the master key of the situation in Russia, 
my dear Wells. It is in your own hands if you will 
but use it. 

Now let us inquire upon whose shoulders you lay 
the blame for this frightful ruin of civilisation. 
Whom do you hold responsible? Obviously you 
cannot blame the present rulers of Russia, for that 
would condemn all your cherished theories. Be- 
sides, you have lauded them as "shining clear," "pro- 
foundly wise" — a model for our own statesmen. 
You are bound in honour and consistency to shield 
and absolve the Bolshevist leaders. Whom, then, 
will you choose for the scapegoats? You look 
round, and you fix upon the "vindictive French 
creditor" and the "journalistic British oaf." These, 



24 My Dear Wells 

you contend, are far more responsible than any 
Communist. 

Ah, those "vindictive French creditors I" They 
have borne the brunt of the war, their land has been 
pillaged and devastated, and now they are so vin- 
dictive as to wish to be paid their just debts ! God, 
what an outrage upon all sound Communistic prin- 
ciples ! 

And the "journalistic British oaf?" One of 
these journalistic British oafs has lately died from 
the effects of imprisonment in a Bolshevist prison. 
Well, at any rate, he has got his deserts. Serve him 
right, the oaf, for causing all this starvation and 
misery by daring to tell the truth about it ! Let us 
hope you will now castigate the other journalistic 
oafs. Spare them not! 

My dear Wells, could you not have made a 
better, or, at least, a more plausible selection of 
scapegoats? I know you were in a dilemma. You 
had to fix the responsibility for all this misery upon 
somebody. But do make another review of the 
whole situation. Bearing in mind that you are 
"thinking for half Europe," do you seriously affirm 
that the present terrible condition of Russia is in any 
measure due to the "vindictive French creditor" 
and the "journalistic British oaf?" If, after due 
consideration, you say that such is your honest belief, 
I entreat you to distrust your mental processes. 

Why, my dear Wells, do you not perceive that this 



Strange Things Get Into His Head 25 

filthy bog of misery, disease, starvation, and de- 
spair, wherein the Russian people grope and perish, 
is the very garden paradise of your International 
dreams, the land flowing with milk and honey 
whereto you and your fellow theorists have been 
leading them, and cheering them on to possess it? 
Now you have reached the promised land, you do 
not recognise it. It isn't in the least like the paradise 
you had mapped out in your head. The strange 
things that get into our heads ! 

I notice that you promise some further description 
of Russian conditions, so that we can "see and esti- 
mate the Bolshevist Government in its true propor- 
tions." This is a matter upon which your views will 
be of absorbing interest to me. Especially I beg 
you to "estimate in its true proportions" the recent 
attempt of Lenin to corrupt our Navy. Give us 
some guidance on this point. 

I have also seen it announced that you intend to 
exercise your prophetic powers, and, more or less 
definitely, to adumbrate the future of Russia. Now, 
my dear Wells, as your constant and faithful mentor, 
I implore you not to prophesy about the future of 
Russia. Remember all the things you prophesied 
about during the war. After your handling of the 
past and present Russia, do you think it will be wise 
of you to tackle the future? 

Besides, Archibald Spofforth is on the watch for 
you, the moment you begin to prophesy about any- 



26 My Dear Wells 

thing. You will remember that I had to defend you 
against him when, in his "Noted English Seers,", he 
classed you as being, on the whole, rather less trust- 
worthy in dealing with world problems than Old 
Moore. I hope I am not betraying any confidence 
when I tell you that Spofforth is anxiously looking 
out for your prognostications about Russia. Spof- 
forth has a brutal disrespect for your theories. 
Don't give him a chance. Rebuke him by holding 
a dignified silence about the future of Russia. 

If I am not usurping your prerogative, I will 
myself make a prophecy about the future of Russia. 
Russia will return to tolerable conditions of life, to 
order, health, security and prosperity, in the meas- 
ure that she returns to and obeys those first abiding 
principles of social conduct and civilised government 
which are always and everywhere in operation; 
which fortify and preserve a State if they are 
obeyed; which disintegrate and destroy a State if 
they are disobeyed. 

What those first abiding principles of civilised 
government are, together with the incidence and 
rigour of their operation, I propose to explain to 
you as I find leisure and opportunity. Meantime, 
I await your further deliverances upon Russian 
affairs, and will deal with them as they reach me at 
home or abroad. 

Faithfully yours, Henry Arthur Jones. 

3rd November, 1920. 



Strange Things Get Into His Head 27 

/ sailed for New York on November 6th and the 
remainder of the series of letters were written in 
that city. H. A. J. 



LETTER FIVE. 

MR. WELLS INVENTS A NEW KIND 
OF HONESTY. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I trust you will acquit me of any intentional dis- 
courtesy in delaying to reply to your second article 
on "Russia in the Shadows" (Drift and Salvage 
— "Sunday Times," November 14, 1920.) It 
did not reach me until I arrived in New York a 
few days ago. I take my earliest leisure to offer 
you such comments and criticism as it seems to de- 
mand, and I ask your permission to lay them first 
before American readers and thinkers. 

The writer in the English journal who recently 
claimed that you are "thinking for half Europe" 
did not specify which half of Europe is under your 
intellectual superintendence. I suppose he intended 
to convey that you are thinking for that very large 
number of Europeans — apparently he estimates 
them at half the population — who are unable to 
think for themselves. I am of opinion, that if sta- 
tistics were available, we should find that the num- 
ber of non-thinkers in Europe would enormously 
exceed his estimate of one-half the population. At 
28 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 29 

any rate, in my desire to be generous to you, I should 
have given you a much larger number of possible 
disciples, and a far wider range of wandering in the 
present chaos of political thought. 

Through an oversight, the inspired writer omitted 
to mention how many Americans you are thinking 
for. Judging from the results, are you not already 
a little overweighted with your task of thinking for 
half Europe? Ought you to load yourself with the 
further responsibility of thinking for any consider- 
able number of Americans? I speak with a care 
for your reputation. 

However, you seem to have accepted this addi- 
tional burden of vicarious intellectual activity on 
behalf of the American, as well as the European, 
Continent. I have no means of estimating what is 
the proportion of American citizens who are unable 
to think for themselves on social and political mat- 
ters, and who are therefore looking to you for 
guidance and enlightenment. Let me say that, 
in the grave questions at issue between us, I 
will cheerfully allow you to think for all who are 
unable to think for themselves, and will myself be 
content to think with those who are able to think 
for themselves. I hope you will be satisfied with 
the sphere of influence I have allotted to you, and 
that you will acknowledge I have made a fair, and 
even a magnanimous, division of our respective 
provinces of thought. I assure you that I will not 



30 My Dear Wells 

try to seduce your disciples from you ; nor do I sup- 
pose that you will seek to gain adherents within my 
circle. 

Having thus carefully defined our respective re- 
lations to readers and thinkers on both continents, I 
address myself to the examination of your second 
paper on Russian conditions. 

Your first paper contained a terrible account of 
the misery, hunger and despair of the masses of the 
common people. Your second paper gives an 
equally distressing picture of the pitiable condition 
of the literary, artistic, and scientific classes. In 
some respects it is more disheartening to read than 
your first article. As we are more grieved and 
pained to visit a lunatic asylum than a general hos- 
pital, so we are more grieved and pained to watch 
the dissolution of the intellectual and artistic life of 
a nation, than to watch the collapse of its commercial 
and economic activities. 

You dwell, with many heartbreaking details, upon 
the miseries and privations of the Russian scientists, 
artists, composers and men of letters ; you speak of 
their futile struggles; the waste of their great gifts; 
the high mortality among them; the abject poverty 
and desperate straits of those that remain. The one 
bright spot in the wide stretch of intellectual and 
artistic desolation is the Russian Theatre. You tell 
us that the great actor Shalyapin maintains what is 
perhaps the last "fairly comfortable" home in 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 31 

Russia. One "fairly comfortable" home, and that 
the last, in the wide Russian continent, with its hun- 
dred million of inhabitants! I get some exceed- 
ingly small satisfaction from knowing that this last 
"fairly comfortable" home in Russia is tenanted 
by an actor. For nearly forty years I have been 
vainly trying to persuade Englishmen to take an 
intelligent interest and pride in their national drama 
and their national theatre. By the grimmest irony, 
the Russian people are starving, but their theatre, 
it seems, is vigorous, healthy and operative; while 
it would not .be a wild exaggeration to say that the 
situation is reversed in England. 

But apart from the theatre, you testify that the 
higher and nobler centres of Russian life are smitten 
with creeping palsy. The scientists, artists and 
writers lie helpless and numbed in cold obstruction; 
groping with pitiful, futile efforts to reach back to 
life; cut off from the arteries of civilisation; under- 
nourished, save by despair; stricken, bedridden, 
impotent, moribund; a perishing brain in the fast 
perishing body of Russian civilisation. 

That is the account you give us of the intellectual 
classes in Russia. While you relate the facts that 
came under your observation, we are in sorrowful 
accord with you. You are but one of a hundred 
voices, all bringing us the same despairing message. 

It is when you interpret these terrible facts that 
you find yourself challenged alike by reason and by 



32 My Dear Wells 

humanity. In this second paper, as in your first, 
you seek excuses for the men who have brought 
Russia to this dreadful condition; and you indicate 
your sympathy with them in their determination to 
spread Internationalism over the civilised world. 
You insinuate that most of the evils that afflict the 
Russian people are due to the misguided policy of 
our own and the allied Governments, who did not 
take your advice at the start, and embrace the Bol- 
shevist leaders and Bolshevist principles as the only 
means of salvation for humanity. 

My dear Wells, if you would but show a quarter 
of the good-will for your own country, and for your 
own Government, in their present difficulties and 
trials, that you show for the Bolshevist Government, 
you would be a desirable British citizen. 

But it has got into your head that International 
government by the proletariat is the only cure for 
the world's sorrows and evils and disorders. By 
the operation of that fatal law which, when a theory 
or an opinion has once obtained lodgment in a man's 
brain, condemns him to harbour and cherish it all 
the more fondly the more it is proved to be false; 
condemns him stubbornly to refuse to examine his 
theory in the light of facts; condemns him to force 
facts into the frame of his theory, and to shut his 
eyes to all facts that will not submit themselves to 
his distortion — by the operation of this fatal law 
you are condemned, my dear Wells, to go on finding 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 33 

excuses for the Bolshevist Government; to explain 
away its murderous tyrannies and cruelties, and to 
suggest that it remains the only means of dragging 
Russia out of its pit of misery, poverty and despair. 

There is a wealth of fine confused thinking in this 
second article of yours. It would be a lengthy, 
but not difficult, task to take from it certain of your 
own phrases, dicta, and admissions, and construct 
out of them a terrible indictment of the whole system 
of Bolshevist Government, including those functions 
of it which you esteem as constructive and hold up 
for our admiration. 

I will select one sentence of yours from this 
paper, and for the present leave unexamined a score 
of others that furnish a convincing refutation of 
your whole social and political theory. With pene- 
trating sagacity, you thus deliver yourself — "When 
a social order based on private property crashes, 
when private property is with some abruptness and 
no qualifications abolished, this does not abolish and 
destroy things which have hitherto constituted pri- 
vate property." It is plain from what has hap- 
pened in Russia that, when private property is 
abolished, a vast amount of it does get destroyed, 
and does not get replaced; and that this leads to the 
woeful discomfort and poverty of the whole people. 
And, further, as you go on to show, much of the 
private property that has not been destroyed, and 
which belonged to individuals, and was useful and 



34 My Dear Wells 

pleasing to them, and helped them to adorn their 
lives — much of this private property is now useless 
to everybody, and is rotting in lumber rooms, and 
will probably be destroyed or plundered as time 
goes by. 

Take, for instance, the stores of beautiful old 
lace that were robbed from Russian gentlewomen 
and that, you tell us, are now packed away in the 
former British Embassy. Lace has always been one 
of the endearing ornaments of delicate and refined 
womanhood; one of those graceful perquisites of 
her sex whereby the mate of man has made herself 
something different from the mate of the gorilla. 
What do you propose should be done with these 
stores of beautiful old lace that the Bolsheviki have 
confiscated? Would you let them stay in their cases 
till they drop into dust? Would you ration them 
out, so far as they will go, to drape the shivering 
shoulders of a few wretched half-clad Russian 
women and to mock their rags and hunger? What 
do you say should be done with all this beautiful lace 
and furniture and other treasures that were fash- 
ioned to be of use and adornment to private persons 
as their private property, and can have no purpose 
unless they are thus owned and used by individuals ? 
Would you destroy them? They are the marks and 
precious effects of a high civilisation. If you would 
destroy them you might, with equal reason and from 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 35 

the same motive, destroy all the other chief results 
of civilisation, which, indeed, seems to be the final 
goal of Bolshevism. You do not say how you would 
dispose of all these confiscated treasures. You fore- 
shadow, apparently with considerable satisfaction, 
a like approaching general confiscation of English 
personal treasures and adornments — which may 
very well happen if our English working classes 
make an attempt to put your theories into practice 
and abolish private property. 

Let us revert for a moment to the beginning of 
this sentence which I have chosen out of many others 
for a close examination. 

"When a social order based on private prop- 
erty ," you say, and I arrest you on these words. 

You write as if the abolition of private property 
had been an occasional normal and natural event 
in history. You have lately been making some ex- 
tensive studies in world history. Have you ever 
known any social order that has not been based on 
private property? Or that has not acknowledged 
large rights of ownership in private property? Do 
you not conduct your own affairs with confidence 
that the British Government (which you lose no 
chance of abusing) will assure you the peaceful 
possession of your own motor car and the due pay- 
ment of your dividends, so that you are thus enabled 
to "think for half Europe, " and being a possessor 



36 My Dear Wells 

of private property yourself you can safely rail 
against private property, and being a capitalist your- 
self you can safely rail against capitalism? 

Will you give us some intelligible explanation of 
how any social order can be established or long 
continued, without a wide recognition of the rights 
of private property? This is a large general ques- 
tion, and cannot here be debated. When I have 
leisure, I will invite you to its further and full con- 
sideration. 

You claim in your first article that the Bolshevist 
Government is the only Government that is possible 
in Russia at the present time. In the sense that 
nothing is possible except that which actually hap- 
pens, you state what is obviously true. In the same 
sense it is true that the ideas which have actually got 
into your head are the only ideas which could pos- 
sibly enter there. It is equally true that the only 
possible course of action that I can take with regard 
to your ideas, is to do my best to chase them out of 
your head. 

In the same sense, it is true that the only possible 
Government in England in 1630 was the Govern- 
ment of Charles I. But Cromwell came, and soon 
made possible another form of government. Again, 
the only possible Government in France in 1780 was 
the Government of Louis XV. But Napoleon came, 
and soon made possible another form of govern- 
ment. In 191 8, Kerensky held for a time the reins 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 37 

of government in Russia. If Kerensky had been a 
man of insight and action, instead of being a 
wordster, if he had joined forces with Korniloff 
instead of betraying him, quite another form of gov- 
ernment would have been possible and operative in 
Russia to-day. The horrors and bloodshed that 
attended the revolution would have been largely 
avoided, together with the misery and starvation 
that have followed. Russia would not now be in 
her present dreadful plight; the whole European 
situation would probably have been stabilised, and 
Eastern Europe would to-day be settling down to 
peaceful industry and security. 

The reply to your assertion that the Bolshevist 
Government is the only possible Government in 
Russia to-day, is that this Government is founded on 
theories which, being enforced, have cruelly de- 
stroyed half the population of the large cities, and 
now oblige the miserable remnant of them to live 
on the verge of starvation. If such are the evident 
results of Bolshevist Government, as your papers 
testify, clearly the only possible form of Government 
in Russia is an impossible one ! It must either re- 
nounce its theories, or dissolve with the dissolving 
remains of Russian civilisation. 

You seem to have some apprehension of this con- 
summation, so far as your illogical apologies for 
Bolshevism will allow you a clear perception of the 
whole situation. For you state that this Bolshevist 



38 My Dear Wells 

Government is based on Marxian principles, and 
these Marxian principles you ruthlessly excommuni- 
cate as crude and unworkable political heresies. In 
my next paper, I will try to unravel the tangled rela- 
tions of Marxian principles with your own political 
creed; so far as you give us any indications of what 
particular brand of socialism you hold, and what are 
its essential tenets. 

By your condemnation of Marxian principles you 
bring a deadly, unanswerable charge against the 
present Bolshevist Government. On the other hand, 
since its first assumption of power, you have praised 
the Bolshevist leaders as "farseeing statesmen," 
"shining clear," "profoundly wise," "intimately ac- 
quainted with social and economic questions, and 
indeed with almost everything that matters in real 
politics." 

These and many other laudatory epithets you have 
showered upon the men who have brought the Rus- 
sian people to their present dreadful condition, and 
who, as you carefully explain to us, are now govern- 
ing Russia on entirely false and vicious Marxian 
principles. If the body of your disciples in Europe 
and America, the millions whom you are "thinking 
for," were able to collate and examine your confused 
utterances, wouldn't you be in a very awkward posi- 
tion as a leader of European thought? 

However, having throughout warmly supported 
the Bolshevist leaders in the English papers, you are 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 39 

now bound to say something in their favour. So, 
having witnessed for yourself the disastrous results 
of their administration, you cast about to think what 
you can advance to their credit, and thus justify 
your wholly inconsistent and illogical sympathy with 
them. And the only credential to character that 
you can give them is that they are "honest." 

You have accused our English statesmen of being 
"crudely ignorant of the world of modern ideas. ,, 
In that strange "world of modern ideas" where you 
formulate your theories, honesty seems to have quite 
changed its type and quality. What kind of honesty 
is this that you claim for Bolshevism? Has it any 
connection with the Eighth Commandment? Ap- 
parently not. 

If you mean national honesty, the Bolshevist Gov- 
ernment has repudiated its national debt. Our 
sorely tried French allies, to whom Russia is largely 
indebted, do not like this new kind of honesty. And 
because they protest against it and will not accept 
it, you, my dear Wells, who are always eager to 
discredit France as well as England — you charge 
the French with being vindictive creditors, and you 
monstrously claim that their natural desire to get 
paid is one of the chief causes of the present de- 
plorable condition of Russia. 

Does the repudiation of national debt count as 
an honest proceeding in your strange "world of 
modern ideas?" Have you ever considered what 



40 My Dear Wells 

would be the effect of a general repudiation of na- 
tional debts on the entire civilisation of the world? 
Are you able even to imagine the incalculable misery 
and ruin it would work for a generation to come? 

Coming to the matter of honesty toward indi- 
viduals, it appears that you indorse the seizure of 
valuable old lace and personal treasures and effects 
as an honest proceeding. You look upon it as a 
natural and desirable part of your scheme for doing 
away with private property. Under the old 
pernicious system that has hitherto prevailed, these 
things were possessed and enjoyed by their owners, 
not always perhaps the most deserving people. Still, 
they were owned and used and enjoyed, so that 
numbers of people had the advantage of them. 
Under the new "honest" Bolshevist Government, 
nobody has the advantage of them. They are 
mostly destroyed and the remainder is left to perish 
unused. 

But let us for a moment grant your curious claim 
that Bolshevism is honest. My dear Wells, the 
profound studies that you have recently been mak- 
ing in world history, cannot have left you in igno- 
rance of the damnable fact that some of the greatest 
mischiefs and misfortunes that have overtaken 
mankind, have been caused by quite honest people 
working from mistaken theories. 

I should not dream of questioning the honesty of 
your own thinking in these matters. Alas, whatever 



Invents a New Kind of Honesty 41 

credit I give to your honesty I must subtract from 
your sapience. 

Taken as a whole, your second article on "Russia 
in the Shadow," with its inevitable deductions is 
a further and most powerful condemnation of 
the political theories that you profess, and that 
you are spreading among your legions of readers. 
Do you not see that, my dear Wells? Read it over 
carefully again. 

Archibald Spofforth has compared you with Old 
Moore, as a prophet and interpreter of world move- 
ments. For myself, I see you as an inverted prophet 
Balaam. Balaam, you remember, was called upon 
by Balak to curse the children of Israel. By a Provi- 
dential intervention, Balaam found himself com- 
pelled to bless them altogether. You, on the other 
hand, were called upon to bless the Bolshevist Gov- 
ernment. Not so much by a lucky intervention of 
Providence, as by the overwhelming pressure of 
facts, you, my dear Wells, have been compelled to 
curse the Bolsheviki altogether. There is this much 
to be said for Balaam. After much prevarication 
and some self-contradiction, he finally came down 
on the right side of the fence. I am not without 
hope that you will do the same. I will render you 
some further assistance to this end. 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

26th November, 1920. 



LETTER SIX. 

MR. WELLS GETS FURTHER 
ENTANGLED. 

My Dear Wells, — 

There is so great an amount of loose and con- 
fused thinking in the world — in addition to your 
own — that it seems advisable to make an organised 
effort to deal with it. I am sure you will claim 
that this effort, like every other human activity, 
should be an International one. After much pro- 
longed and earnest consideration, I am convinced 
that this important matter should be placed under 
the jurisdiction of the League of Nations. This, 
I allow, is a startling proposal. I further allow 
that it is an utterly impracticable one. But surely 
that is no reason why it should not form part of 
the League's general scheme of operations, and 
afford its members another attractive subject for 
debate. 

Without searching for the permanent and under- 
lying cause of War, it must be granted that the 
late disastrous world conflict was immediately 
caused by the failure of a certain number of Euro- 
42 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 43 

pean politicians to think clearly, honestly and 
righteously upon the questions that you and I are 
now discussing — with less alacrity of cheerful re- 
sponse on your part than I could wish you to show. 

Those who have accurate and retentive memories 
will be able to recall that the League of Nations 
was invented for the purpose of doing away with 
war. Its motto, I am told, is to be emblazoned on 
a shield of gold (an involuntary gift from the 
opulent taxpayers of Europe) and is to be inscribed 
over the portico of its hotel in Geneva. That motto 
runs as follows: "Let every nation meddle in the 
affairs of every other nation." Putting aside the 
question whether this is the best method of securing 
that international good-will and amity which we all 
desire, it is manifest that careless and disordered 
thinking is an accessory cause of war. Now, if the 
League of Nations is benevolently engaged in stop- 
ping war, it may be quite as benevolently engaged 
in stopping the careless and disordered thinking that 
leads to war — or at least in debating about the 
matter. The League has got this large hotel in 
Geneva, and its members must debate about some- 
thing. As a taxpayer, I contribute to the enormous 
expenses of the League. I hope, therefore, that I 
am entitled to suggest a subject for its discussion. 

Further, my dear Wells, in proposing to place all 
the careless and disordered thinking in the world 
under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, I 



44 My Dear Wells 

am paying a very pretty compliment to yourself. 
For this same League of Nations was one of the 
many things that you so lavishly prophesied about 
during the war. It is true that before it was con- 
stituted, the League tended to cloud that good un- 
derstanding between America and Britain upon 
which the peace of the whole world depends. It is 
also true that one of its first effects, after it was 
constituted, was to cloud that good understanding 
between Britain and France which is almost, if not 
quite, as necessary for the preservation of the 
world's peace. But if I know anything of the con- 
stitution of your mind, if I rightly estimate your 
loyal, unflinching adherence to your theories, even 
when they are working disastrously for mankind, 
your faith in the League of Nations remains un- 
shaken. 

For these reasons, then, I propose that the League 
of Nations shall be appointed to control — or at least 
to discuss — the vast amount of loose, disordered 
thinking that goes on in the world. 

I suppose that the League will proceed in this 
matter by its favourite system of mandates. I have, 
therefore, applied to the Council of the League of 
Nations for a mandate to superintend your social 
and political philosophy. I hope you will take this 
as evidence of my continued interest in your attempts 
to impose your international theories upon the 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 45 

kindly simplicity of those wEom you are "thinking 
for." 

It would be a grateful acknowledgment of the 
services I am rendering you, and it would also be a 
flattering courtesy to the League itself, if you would 
also apply to the Council for a mandate to look after 
my thinking on these questions. For, if I am hold- 
ing wrong opinions about momentous matters upon 
which the peace and security of the whole world 
depend, you could not do me, or the public, a greater 
service than to expose my fallacies with the same 
vigilance and pertinacity that I am trying to expose 
yours. Unlike yourself, the moment I find I am 
holding a wrong opinion I turn the veriest coward 
and renegade. I do not stand by it and seek to 
justify it. I abjure it and take to my heels. 

It may be that the Council of the League of 
Nations will refuse to issue a mandate to me to look 
after your thinking. I do not think this is likely. 
Mandates have not been going off very well lately, 
and I take it that the League will be only too glad 
to issue at least one mandate that will be scrupu- 
lously, industriously and rigorously obeyed. If, 
however, the Council refuse to grant me a mandate 
to watch over your lucubrations, I shall follow the 
course that is usually adopted with regard to the 
League's decisions. I shall take no notice of them. 
I shall issue a mandate to myself. 



46 My Dear Wells 

In pursuance of this resolve I proceed to my 
promised examination of your third paper on "Rus- 
sia in the Shadow" ("The New York Sunday 
Times," November 21st, 1920). 

In reading it through, I was so much struck by 
two separate passages in it that I think them worthy 
to be detached from the body of the paper and set 
forth in juxtaposition. In the beginning of the 
article you say, "To-day the Bolshevist Government 
sits, I believe, in Moscow, as securely established as 
any Government in Europe." That sentence tacitly 
affirms the enduring stability of Bolshevist rule. 
Later in the article you say, "If we help Baron 
Wrangel to pull down the by no means firmly estab- 
lished Government in Moscow " That sentence 

tacitly affirms the precarious instability of Bolshevist 
rule. 

Of course, you may juggle with both sentences 
until you prove that you didn't mean to convey 
either one impression or the other. In the first 
sentence, it suited your general purpose to frighten 
us away from questioning the authority and perma- 
nence of Bolshevist rule. In the second sentence, it 
suited your general purpose to frighten us into 
supporting Bolshevist rule, because it is an attempt 
to enforce Internationalist theories. You may 
plead that your inconsistencies are not likely to be 
noticed by your disciples, who for the most part 
allow you to do their thinking for them. It is quite 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled- 47 

likely that you do not notice these inconsistencies 
yourself. But if you will not think me annoyingly 
inquisitive, may I press you to tell us which of these 
two contradictory opinions about Bolshevist rule 
you do really hold? 

I may remind you that you took, what has been 
called with exaggerated accuracy, a week-end trip to 
Russia, in order that you might learn all about 
the conditions of the country, and the aims and 
prospects of its present rulers. Very plainly the 
destiny of millions in Europe depends upon whether 
or not Bolshevist government is securely established 
in Moscow. You are at liberty not to have an 
opinion upon this question of sovereign importance 
to all the world. You can frankly say, "I don't 
know." But, kindly disposed as I am to allow you 
the widest and wildest latitude of unsupported and 
unverified assertion, indulgent as I am to all human 
frailties, I really cannot permit you to hold two con- 
tradictory opinions upon the same matter of fact. 
That is asking too much of my good nature. Please 
tell us which opinion you do really hold. The least 
respect you can show to those whose thinking you 
are doing for them, is to be coherently wrong. 

Having given this striking and characteristic 
example of the measure of your ability to think for 
other people, and of the value of your pronounce- 
ments, I might well be absolved from any further 
analysis either of the statements you make about 



48 My Dear Wells 

Russian conditions, or of the conclusions you draw 
from them. In this third paper there is again a 
wealth of confused and contradictory utterance and 
inference. A less gentle-mannered man than myself 
would be tempted to a severe exposure and reproof 
of it. But I wish to let you off easily, in the hope 
that my moderation will incline you to a judicious 
suppression of your more glaring delinquencies and 
illogicalities. 

I must, however, glance at one or two of the many 
loose and provocative passages which I had marked 
for dissection and refutation. In sketching the con- 
dition of Russia in the closing months of 19 17 you 
remark: ''Through this fevered and confused coun- 
try went representatives of Britain and France, blind 
to the quality of immense and tragic disaster about 
them, intent only upon the war!* 

I think it impossible that any representative of 
Britain or France at that terrible time could be blind 
to "the quality of immense and tragic disaster about 
them," not only in Russia, but throughout Europe. 
If they were blind how can you possibly know it? 
Have you questioned them about their impressions 
of the Russian situation at that time? What is your 
authority for that statement? What prompts you 
to make it, except your ineradicable antipathy to your 
own country and to France? It is probable in the 
highest degree that in the midst of the threatening 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 49 

and increasing anxieties of the whole European situa- 
tion in those months, the representatives of Britain 
and France in Russia, instead of being blind, saw 
very clearly that the only way of avoiding a far more 
immense and tragic disaster for Russia was to be 
"intent on the war." In that case their eyes and 
their intelligence were far more wide awake than 
yours. 

For again, I must remind you, and I do here 
stamp and engrave it upon your memory, and upon 
the memory of every one who reads these letters, 
so that they may have a perpetual test of the value 
, of your judgment in all these supreme matters — I 
do here insistently remind you, my dear Wells, that 
in those closing months of 19 17 you were calling 
upon England, in the columns of our leading jour- 
nals, to sacrifice and abandon everything that she 
had taken up arms to guard, and to make an in- 
famous, ignoble, defeatist peace with Germany. I 
brought you to account then, as I am bringing you 
to account now, and as I shall continue to bring you 
to account, while you continue to backbite your 
country, and to fondle those who are seeking to drag 
it into revolution and anarchy. 

In those late months of 19 17 you were perni- 
ciously intent upon stopping the war. Naturally, 
you have a bad word for the British and French 
representatives who were intent upon urging Russia 



50 My Dear Wells 

to carry it on. Had Russia been able to follow their 
counsels, she would probably have been spared the 
worst of her present miseries. 

Let us touch upon another point. You speak with 
admiration of the genius of the ex-Pacifist Trotzky. 
Ex-Pacifist! Yes, my dear Wells, if you will but 
follow the laws of action and reaction, you will find 
that Pacifism and the proclamation of International 
Brotherhood inevitably call forth a response of 
militarism. You indicate some sympathetic admira- 
tion for the spirit and the equipment of the army 
which the ex-Pacifist Trotzky has raised. They are 
to be employed, among other things, in undermining 
the security of the British Empire. Of course you 
give them a passing nod of recognition. 

Zorin, another of the Bolshevist Communist 
leaders, engages your affection and admiration. He 
met, you tell us, with brutal incivility when applying 
for a job as a packer in a big dry goods store in 
New York. He therefore set himself to wreck 
what remained of social order in Russia. It seems 
to be an ill-founded and insufficient motive, some- 
thing akin to the motive of the boy who stoned a 
flock of goslings because some days before a gander 
had pecked his leg. Doubtless you will argue that 
in the urgent necessity to destroy our present civilisa- 
tion, the sins of the ganders in New York must be 
visited upon the goslings in Russia. 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 51 

But Zorin established a still stronger title to your 
friendship and esteem. You did your best, you say, 
to find out from Zenovieff and Zorin what they 
thought they were doing at the Baku conference. 
You suppose they "had a vague idea of hitting back 
at the British Government." Naturally, you declare 
you have a real friendship for Comrade Zorin. Any 
man who hits at your own Government and your 
own country is a man whom you take to your heart. 
Throughout this third paper you condemn and ex- 
pose the vicious Marxian principles upon which 
these men are governing Russia. But you will 
heartily and freely forgive them for all the conse- 
quent misery and starvation and ruin they have 
brought upon their country, in consideration of their 
lofty determination to spread these same doctrines 
throughout the British Empire, and bring your own 
country to the same misery, starvation and ruin. 
That, I submit to you, my dear Wells, is a fair sum- 
mary of your general political argument. It unifies 
the inconsistencies which all these papers of yours 
contain into the consistency of a sustained effort on 
your part to vilify your own country and to aid and 
extol the Russian revolutionists, who avowedly are 
seeking to break into pieces the British Empire. 

Unless you express a wish that I shall examine 
your third paper in greater detail, I shall conclude 
that you are satisfied with the remarks that I have 



52 My Dear Wells 

already made upon it. I must not forget my promise 
to let you off easily, so far as my stern sense of the 
duty I owe you will allow me. 

In my last letter I made another promise. I 
rashly said I would try to unravel the tangled rela- 
tions of Marxian principles with your own political 
creed. This, I frankly confess, I am unable to do ; 
for I cannot get any clear and consequent knowl- 
edge of what your political creed is. I shall have 
to throw myself upon your indulgence, and ask you 
to be kind enough to explain exactly what are its 
guiding principles, and how you propose to apply 
them in a practical, intelligible way to the present 
troubles and disorders of the world. 

You unreservedly condemn and ridicule the car- 
dinal Marxian doctrines. You tell us that although 
Marxian Communism is stupidly, blindly wrong and 
mischievous, yet you have an admiration and friend- 
ship for the men who have imposed it upon the 
Russian people to the infinite misery and impoverish- 
ment of the land. Further, you obviously regard the 
British Empire as a monstrous imposture, and you 
see in its prolonged existence the one great obstacle 
to the realisation of your International theories and 
designs. 

But these are negative doctrines. I suppose you 
would call yourself a Socialist and a revolutionary. 
But, my dear Wells, there are so many different 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled! 53 

sorts of Socialists, and so many different sorts of 
revolutionaries. Apparently, their only point of 
agreement is that the present social order must be 
destroyed, and a new civilisation built upon prin- 
ciples utterly different from those which have hith- 
erto regulated the conduct and actions of mankind. 

When I was a boy, there were various religious 
sects in the provincial town of some twenty thousand 
inhabitants where I lived. Their spiritual guides 
and elders disputed interminably about the doctrines 
of justification, sanctification, predestination, and 
other essential, but entirely obscure and transcenden- 
tal articles of faith. I remember that the Particular 
Baptists, an extremely small and exclusive sect, 
prided themselves upon being God's own elect. 
This enabled them to indulge in constant theological 
discussion and occasional moral lapses. 

It seems that the varieties and vagaries of theo- 
logical doctrine, which afforded so much opportunity 
for earnest debate to our grandfathers, are in this 
generation replaced by the varieties and vagaries 
of Socialist doctrine. I was awed and impressed 
by the mysteries of justification and predestination. 
I could not understand them, and gave up all at- 
tempts to bring them into relation with the realities 
of the world in which I was living. I am not awed 
and not impressed by the varied and contradictory 
doctrines of Socialism. But, equally, I cannot bring 



54 My Dear Wells 

them into relation with the realities of the world 
in which I am living. They offer to me no better 
guidance in the conduct and regulation of the world's 
practical affairs than my old puzzles "Justification" 
and "Predestination." 

In consideration of the trouble I am taking to 
put you right, my dear Wells, I hope you will take 
the pains to relieve my bewilderment when I try to 
understand your own political principles and to put 
them into practical relation with the facts and 
realities of our disordered world. Give us some 
intelligible statement of the socialistic creed that will 
transform human nature, and will therefore be work- 
able in this actual world in which we live. 

I am quite sure that in your voluminous writings 
you have already formulated one, or perhaps fifty, 
of such paper schemes for the regeneration of 
mankind by Socialistic International Government. 
Alas! my dear Wells, you formulated a paper 
scheme for the international government of Mid- 
Africa. Whatever its merits, it had the rather 
serious drawback that any attempt to work it would 
have thrown the whole continent into confusion. 
However, I will not dwell any further upon your 
indiscretions. You are relying upon my promise to 
let you off easy. 

There are wicked men in the world, my dear 
Wells, who won't let your theories work. That is 
the sole bar to your success as a social philosopher. 



Mr. Wells Gets Further Entangled 55 

Why not frustrate their malice and get a new set of 
theories? 

Adieu, till our next meeting. 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

2nd December, 1920. 



LETTER SEVEN. 

MR. WELLS, THE SAILORMAN, AND 
THE STOLEN TEAPOT. 

My Dear Wells, — 

In a former letter I found it convenient to define 
our respective relations to readers and thinkers in 
America and England. With a generosity that I 
hope you appreciate, I concede that you should be 
allowed to think for all who are unable to think for 
themselves. I do not doubt that, even after these 
pape'rs of yours on "Russia in the Shadow," you 
will still be able to command and preserve the re- 
spect and admiration of this very numerous body. 
For myself I begged, what I am sure you will con- 
sider a less enviable privilege, that of thinking with 
those who are able to think for themselves. 

Addressing myself exclusively to members of this 
clique, I will say that these Russian papers of yours, 
when carefully read, giving due weight to all your 
statements, admissions, suppressions, apologies, ex- 
tenuations, insinuations, confusions and contradic- 
tions — drawing from your own words their inevit- 
able deductions and consequences — I will say that 
these papers of yours contain the most formidable 
56 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 57 

and damning indictment of Bolshevist Government 
that their strongest opponent could frame, or their 
most hapless victim could desire. 

Your fourth article ("New York Sunday Times," 
November 28, 1920) is called "Creative Effort in 
Russia." Your first three papers pictured very vividly 
the widely spread misery, destitution, starvation and 
aimless despair that prevail throughout the land. 
Being obsessed with your theory that International 
Socialistic Government must at all costs be enforced 
upon the world, and the Bolshevist Government 
being the only one that has yet attempted to carry 
your theory into practice, you are bound to find 
some show of evidence that the Bolshevist Govern- 
ment is not responsible for the continued and pro- 
gressive misery and decay of Russia. So you fasten 
the blame upon any fictitious or quite secondary 
causes that will serve your purpose; and, chiefly, 
you insinuate that the British and French Govern- 
ments are the malignant blunderers who are mainly 
accountable for the worst miseries and disasters that 
have fallen upon Russia. 

You are also bound to find some show of evidence 
that this universal collapse and ruin is compensated 
by such a display of "creative effort" as to prove 
that Bolshevist Government is a hopeful and de- 
sirable experiment for mankind. Here you make 
out a very bad case indeed. You called your second 
paper "Drift and Salvage." In it you showed that 



58 My Dear Wells 

while there was a tremendous amount of "Drift," 
there was an infinitesimal amount of "Salvage." In 
this fourth paper, you equally show that the very 
small quantity and the very poor quality of the 
"Creative Effort" in Russia is in itself a severe con- 
demnation of the enormous Destructive Effort that 
preceded and has accompanied it. 

Let us examine your account of this "Creative 
Effort." The first thing that strikes us is the meagre- 
ness and poverty of your items. Is that all the credit 
of constructive foresight and promised stability and 
security that you can place against the incalculable 
deficit of actual famine, misery, disease and helpless 
apathy and despair? You tell us that this helpless 
apathy and despair, this feeling of irreparable col- 
lapse and ruin, possesses the Russian people, and yet 
you try to awaken our admiration for the Bolshevist 
rulers, because, in spite of their governing Russia 
on what you explain are false and vicious Marxian 
principles, they are "the only body of people in this 
vast spectacle of Russian ruin with a common faith" 
— in these false principles — "and a common spirit" 
— of blind, reckless fanaticism. My dear Wells! 
O, my dear Wells ! O, my ultra-preposterous Wells ! 
O, my exceedingly befuddled and bemuddled Wells I 
O, my obstinately auto-obfuscated Wells! 

Again, I have marked a long succession of pas- 
sages in your fourth article that invite, nay clamour 
for exposure, or challenge, or indignant reproof, 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 59 

or a smart tap with the jester's bauble. But I must 
remember that the good, patient public has other 
interests in life besides the ventilation of your 
theories. Also, I must not forget my promise to let 
you off easily — so far as you do not trespass too 
much on my kindly forbearance. 

You give us several illustrations of the kind of 
"Creative Effort" that is being organised in Russia. 
You tell us that there are Bolsheviki so stupid that 
they would stop the teaching of chemistry in schools 
until they were assured that it was "proletarian" 
chemistry. You say that Hebrew studies have been 
suppressed because they are "reactionary." Ah! 
Here is a clue — 

Great prophets and poets and teachers of Israel, 
you who for centuries have shown mankind the way 
of life, and kept in bounds the turbulent seas of 
human savagery and passion and lust; you who have 
set up the everlasting signals and landmarks that 
guide the wayward steps of our race, and have in- 
flamed the peoples with the thirst for righteousness, 
and have fed the spiritual sources of the world's 
civilisation, and have written your golden precepts 
upon the hearts of all them that have loved and 
sacrificed themselves for their brother men — Moses, 
David, Solomon, Isaiah, Job, Jesus the son of 
Sirach, Jesus of Nazareth, and all you kindred 
great consultant oracles and counselors of the nations 
— fitly, most fitly, and with surest instinct, O obsolete 



60 My Dear Wells 

dead reactionary ones, have the Bolshevist rulers 
decreed that you shall have no voice or sway in their 
pauper pandemonium commonwealth! 

We get an impression that whatever "Creative 
Effort" there may be in Russia, it must be singularly 
inept or misdirected, when you relate, with a bitter 
sense of ill-usage, that about eighty hours of your 
life were "consumed in travelling, telephoning and 
waiting about in order to talk for about an hour 
and a half with Lenin." Eighty hours ! Why, my 
dear Wells, that must have been approximately half 
the time you had at your disposal for the purpose 
of thoroughly investigating and studying the condi- 
tion of the Russian people and the effects of Bol- 
shevist Government. Eighty hours spent to obtain 
an hour and a half's talk with Lenin! Take my 
word for it, my dear Wells, it was time very badly 
spent. Now if you will but come and have an hour 
and a half's talk with me, I promise you that either 
the one or the other of us shall derive some benefit 
from it. 

The impression of the total absence of any 
"Creative Effort in Russia" that works toward the 
comfort and convenience of the daily lives of the 
people, is still further deepened by the account you 
give us of your journey and visit to Moscow. In 
a graphic narrative you describe how you were 
placed in charge of a sailorman, who was topograph- 
ically ignorant of where he was taking you, and 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 61 

who carried about a stolen silver teapot in lieu of a 
mariner's compass to steer your wanderings. Now 
I see in that story a profound piece of instructive 
allegory, mercifully vouchsafed to you by Providence 
to warn you off your International theories. The 
sailorman aptly symbolises an incompetent, ignorant 
and dishonest crew of politicians who have forsaken 
their useful occupations to take charge of bewildered 
humanity (yourself) and to guide it through a 
strange city (the present world disorder) about 
whose topography they know nothing, and this with 
no better instrument for directing themselves and 
the mass of bewildered humanity they have taken 
under their charge, than the false mariner's compass 
of a stolen silver teapot. (The stolen teapot clearly 
signifies that taking other people's property is the 
only guide to their confused movements.) 

Why, my dear Wells, the allegory is perfect. Lay 
it to heart, I beseech you, as the threatening symbol 
and foreshadow of what will befall us under Inter- 
national Government. 

After much devious and futile wandering, you 
were moved to swear roundly at the sailorman. Yes, 
that is what we shall all be doing, when we find our- 
selves under the direction of the International sailor- 
man who has stolen our best silver teapot. Oh, the 
language we shall use at him ! 

You give much space in this fourth article to the 
"Creative Effort" that you saw in operation in 



62 My Dear Wells 

Russian schools. You visited two of them. You 
formed a very bad opinion of the first. You could 
witness no teaching, and the behaviour of the 
youngsters indicated a low standard of discipline. 
Your guide questioned the children upon the subject 
of English literature and the writers they liked most. 
One name dominated all others — your own. You 
tell us that amongst these badly-behaved, ill-con- 
ducted little scholars you towered like a literary 
colossus, and that Milton, Dickens, and Shake- 
speare ran about intermittently between your feet. 
No fact that you have related, my dear Wells, shows 
more clearly the appalling perversion and confusion 
of ideas that reign in Russia. However, you mod- 
estly deprecated the flattering estimate that these 
feeble, immature intellects had formed of your po- 
sition in English literature. You even resented that 
the other authors — amongst them, Shakespeare — 
were not given a chance to train the children's minds. 
But, my dear Wells, do you know that this Shake- 
speare is a rank, incorrigible, irreclaimable patriot, 
as pestilent a patriot as Pitt or Washington or 
Lincoln — believe me, a villainous and most robus- 
tious and unabashed subverter of all your cherished 
theories? But perhaps you haven't read him. Do 
give him a spare hour when you can find the time. 
Archibald Spofforth has just suggested to me that 
you would do well to take Shakespeare away to a 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 63 

quiet desert island, and study him carefully for a 
year. 

But this Shakespeare, whom you seem to have 
heard about as an excellent author for the young — 
why, my dear Wells, if you once allow this man's 
political philosophy to get a hearing, if you once 
let him impregnate the young with his pernicious 
principles of government and political and social 
order, Internationalism won't stand the tenth part 
of a sporting chance against him. I tell you this, 
so that you may take the necessary steps to prevent 
his influence from spreading. In your third article, 
pour encourager les autres, the millions of the un- 
employed who are dissatisfied, you confess to a 
longing as a young man to burn down your employ- 
er's shop.* Why not do a more necessary piece of 
incendiarism, and clear a free course for Interna- 
tionalism to have its way and work its will in the 
world? Why not burn down Stratford-on-Avon 
Church, and rid the world of what remains of this 
arch enemy of human progress as set forth in the 
doctrines and methods of Jack Cade? I make this 
suggestion, because it falls in with your own impulse 
to burn down your employer's shop as a practical 
way of removing social grievances. 

And it is this same Shakespeare who, whenever 

*"I ivould have set fire to that place {his employer's shop) if I 
had not been convinced it was overinsured." — H. G. Wells, "Rus- 
sia in the Shadows" p. 85. 



64 My Dear Wells 

he touches your social and political theories, shrivels 
them to tinder — it is this same Shakespeare whom 
you recommend as a teacher in Bolshevist schools, 
as an instructor of Bolshevist children! 

My dear Wells, my unapproachable Wells, into 
what a sub-nethermost pit, into what a Serbonian 
bog of disconglutinated illogicality have you fallen, 
and do there flounder, and cannot clear its mud 
from your eyes ! 

You visited these two Russian schools. In the 
first, where there was no evidence of teaching, and 
where the children seemed to spend all their time 
in reading your books, there was a low standard of 
discipline. I make no comment. I draw no infer- 
ence. Doubtless there are schools where your books 
and social philosophy do not form the complete 
curriculum, and where yet the behaviour of the 
children is not all that could be desired. 

You visited a second school. You tested the 
vogue of H. G. Wells among its scholars. None of 
them had ever heard of him. The school library 
contained none of his books. This you tell us was 
a much better school than the one you had first 
visited. The discipline of the children was better, 
and you saw some excellent teaching in progress. 
Again I make no comment. I draw no inference. 
I merely relate the facts as you state them. I am 
the last man to say that a knowledge of your writings 
is the only cause of bad behaviour and lack of dis- 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 65 

cipline in children. Yet a close study of your ac- 
count of your visits to these two Russian schools, 
gives us some reason to fear that this may be the 
case. The matter needs further examination. 
'Meantime I will give you the benefit of the doubt. 

You afterwards discovered that in the first school 
your friend Chukovsky had been playing a trick 
upon you by arranging for you a spurious temporary 
popularity among its feeble, immature intellects. 
That was not what you desired. You rightly ad- 
minister a gentle reproof to Chukovsky for not 
appreciating "the real gravity of the business you 
had in hand." Chukovsky evidently thought you 
were out for a lark. I hope Chukovsky now under- 
stands that you wish your social philosophy to be 
taken seriously. 

You generalise, most rashly I should say, from 
the two schools you visited that the quality of 
teaching has risen since the Czarist regime, and you 
try to make out a good case for the educational 
"Creative Effort" in Russia. Alas, my dear Wells, 
you have to admit that great numbers of the children 
cannot be got to school at all, and are engaged in 
secret illicit trading upon the streets. The adults 
are forbidden to buy and sell, and consequently this 
vast amount of secret illicit trading has to be done, 
and is done by the Russian children. Further, you 
give us horrible accounts of widely spread sexual 
immorality among the young. Well, what could 



66 My Dear Wells 

you expect? The children are taken from the care 
of their parents and are being, as you term it, "insti- 
tutionalised" — dreadful word and dreary process 
and dreary, abominable destiny for the children. 
Would you like your own children to be "institution- 
alised"? 

Taken altogether, your fourth paper gives us the 
impression that there is very little "Creative Effort 
in Russia"; that most of what there is, is actively 
mischievous, and that none, or scarcely any of it, 
is directed toward securing the daily comfort and 
happiness of the people. The "Creative Effort in 
Russia" appears to be of the same kind as Jack 
Cade's. 

We learn from another visitor to Russia of a 
single "Creative Effort" on the part of Mrs. 
Trotzky. The abolition of buying and selling has 
naturally led to this enormous amount of secret 
illicit trading, which, as you tell us, finds sweet and 
salutary employment for the Russian children. I 
think you may use this fact as a striking illustration 
of an initial benefit conferred upon society by the 
abolition of private property. 

But, in addition to this vast development of 
private illicit trading, there is also a public illicit 
trading rendezvous, appropriately called the 
"Thieves' Market," where the general commercial 
transactions and activities of Moscow are carried 
on. Being unable to eradicate the criminal tendency 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 67 

of human nature to buy and sell, and yet being 
laudably determined to uphold the principles of 
Bolshevism, the Government raids the Thieves' 
Market at intervals, and arrests both buyers and 
sellers. 

Now whether from private necessity or from 
conviction that it is to the public advantage that 
people who have goods to sell should be allowed to 
sell them, and people who are in want of goods 
should be allowed to buy them — inspired by one of 
these two motives, Mrs. Trotzky went incognito 
to the Thieves' Market to purchase some necessity 
or luxury of life. She was arrested by the Govern- 
ment raiders, and being unable to prove her identity, 
or to telephone her plight to the immaculate 
Trotzky, she was locked up in prison for a night. 
That is how they punish genuine creative effort in 
Russia. For I maintain, my dear Wells, that Mrs. 
Trotzky was engaged in a genuine, if unconscious, 
effort to restore the social order that is involved 
in, and is inseparable from, commercial intercourse. 
You, of course, maintain the contrary. 

So much, then, for your fourth paper on "Creative 
Effort in Russia." 

When I come to your fifth article, "The Dreamer 
in the Kremlin," I am overwhelmed by the oppor- 
tunities it offers to me for comment. Judging from 
your amiable but silent reception of such comment 



68 My Dear Wells 

and admonition as I have already proffered to you 
on the first four articles, and relying, as indeed you 
may, upon my repeated promise to treat you gently 
and mercifully, I am sure you would wish me to 
subject this fifth article to a strict and exhaustive 
analysis. You are looking for it, anxiously waiting 
for it, and I will not disappoint you. But, for the mo- 
ment, I must beg you to show me some of the kindly 
forbearance that I have shown to you throughout 
these letters. I promise you that I will deal with this 
fifth article as soon as I can find the leisure and 
opportunity to do justice to it. For the present, 
you must exercise patience — tedious and exasperat- 
ing as the delay may seem to you. 

One comment, however, I am forced to make. 
This "Dreamer in the Kremlin/' to whom you have 
alluded as the "beloved Lenin," * is responsible for 
innumerable savageries and cruelties upon this most 
miserable, starving and bewildered Russian people. 
Four thousand of his hapless countrymen were re- 
cently shot down in one month without a trial. What 
of that? What of all the other countless thousands 
of tortures and murders? He is an enemy of 
your country. He has lately sent to England 
stolen gold to bribe our workingmen to mad 
revolution, and to corrupt the British Navy, 
the ultimate defence of that civilisation which, im- 

* "Lenin, beloved leader of all that is energetic in Russia to- 
day," "Russia in the Shadows," p. 88. 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 69 

perfect, lumbering, and open in many respects to 
wide improvement as we all admit, does yet shelter 
you in your persistent attacks upon it; provides you 
with a motor car and cosy dividends, and also, as I 
entreat you to remember, does also shelter and 
protect not only yourself, but hundreds of millions 
on this earth, from such misery, anarchy, despair 
and starvation as prevail in Russia. He is an enemy 
of your country. Naturally you call him the "be- 
loved Lenin." 

While your articles on "Russia in the Shadow" 
have been making their weekly appearances, I have 
had to listen to much ill-natured and contemptuous 
criticism upon them from Archibald Spofforth. All 
through I have taken your part against him, so far 
as you gave me the chance of saying a good word 
for you. I have constantly said to Spofforth, 
"Watch them carefully! Wells has got something 
up his sleeve. Wells will make some great unex- 
pected coup before he has finished." 

I argued with Spofforth something in this strain : 
"Wells may be a very poor and confused social 
philosopher, but he is a confirmed and determined 
Socialist." To this Spofforth only emitted one of 
his unmannerly grunts. I grew a little heated on 
your behalf. "Wells," I continued severely, "is 
always pointing out the foolish and criminal waste 
that goes on in our present social economy. Now," 
I said, fixing Spofforth with a triumphant glance and 



70 My Dear Wells 

nod, "Wells knows that paper is very scarce and 
dear. He knows that the newspaper proprietors 
have to guard every inch of space. Do you 
mean to tell me that Wells would allow tons (per- 
haps this was an exaggeration) of valuable paper 
to be used in advertising him as the greatest living 
English writer, unless he had got something good 
to say? Wells is too good a Socialist, too severe 
an economist, and too sensible a man, to allow all 
that valuable paper to be used in advertising him, 
without doing something to justify the expense. 
Wait and see," I said. "Wells is going to spring 
upon us some surprise ; he is going to show us what 
the greatest living English writer can do when he 
gets a theme that he knows how to handle. " 

I was so confident in your powers, my dear Wells, 
that I eagerly accepted the bet Spofforth offered of 
a new shiny silk top hat — I forgot for the moment 
that shiny top hats will be too conspicuous in your 
new social order — Spofforth offered to bet one that 
you wouldn't make any literary coup that would 
justify your editors in wasting all that paper. My 
dear Wells, I've lost my bet ! I hope you will allow 
that a slight feeling of grievance against you in this 
matter is not unnatural on my part. 

Of course, I couldn't exactly tell what sort of a 
coup you were going to make. I had some ex- 
pectancy that before you ended these papers you 
would announce that, having written so much about 



Mr. Wells and the Sailorman 71 

how the world should be governed, you had per- 
suaded Lenin to enjoy a short vacation, while you 
took his place for a fortnight, and showed us in 
a practical, feasible, workable way how the trick is 
to be done. You ought really to take the first 
fortnight you can spare, put yourself at the head of 
affairs in one of the distracted countries and show 
what a happy place you can make of it, when you 
govern it instead of "think" for it. Whatever lucky 
country you choose to govern, I think you should 
allow yourself a full fortnight to get things straight 
— the same time that you took for your very com- 
prehensive review of Russian conditions. 

To conclude. If, my dear Wells, I seem at times 
to be trifling with these deadly serious questions in 
these deadly serious times, I assure you that my ap- 
parent levity is only on the surface. I have the 
deepest sense of their magnitude and import. But 
how can I deal with the many inconsistencies and 
confusions that swarm through your articles and that 
may lead the unthinking multitude into vain revolt 
against eternal realities and eternal laws — how can 
I treat these heedless inconsistencies, except to laugh 
at you — and weep for them? 

There is a soul of goodness in things evil. Hu- 
manity is like a running stream. However muddy 
and polluted it may be in parts of its course, it 
cleanses itself as it flows along. We may take heart 
from these following facts. The leaders of the 



72 My Dear Wells 

Russian Government, you say, are changing their 
opinions on many points. Another recent traveller 
brings us word that scarcely any of their original 
decrees and laws are now enforced, but are allowed 
to drop into disuse as they are found to be im- 
practicable. Yet another observer tells us that the 
Russian Army is inflamed by Patriotism, and that 
this is really the force that holds the people to- 
gether. And again, another visitor says that vainly 
have the people been torn away from Religion. 
They are crowding the churches. Religion and 
Patriotism are primary universal instincts in the 
hearts of men. They often take absurd and mis- 
chievous forms, but they continue to move the masses 
of mankind. Your theories seek to abolish these 
primary instincts. That's one of the reasons why 
your theories won't work, my dear Wells. With 
constant concern for you, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
ioth December, 1920. 



LETTER EIGHT. 

MR. WELLS BECOMES EVEN MORE 
PREPOSTEROUS. 

My Dear Wells, — 

It grieves me to the heart to find that you are not 
taking a more vigorously loquacious part in this con- 
troversy. The questions at issue between you and 
me are of such sovereign importance to mankind that 
I am justified in expecting from you something more 
than this conspiracy of silence and self-obliteration. 

I do not forget that at the beginning of our dis- 
cussion, in "The London Evening Standard," you so 
far indulged my wish for a response, as to call me 
a "liar," "an excited imbecile," "a silly ranter," a 
"forger," with other kindred vivacities of dignified 
debate. That gave an exhilarating start to the 
affair. ' It led me to expect great things from you. 
"Here's a man of mettle !" I said. "Here's a foe- 
man worthy of my steel!" But in the effort of 
administering this resounding chastisement to me, 
you seem to have exhausted your capacity for further 
argument. Like Homer, you ceased. You said it 
was impossible to argue with a man who did not 
73 



74 My Dear Wells 

understand the use of inverted commas. Rather 
than you should be robbed of whatever benefit you 
might gain from a further examination of your 
theories and whimsies, I offered to carry on the 
controversy all alone, and to find arguments for us 
both. I hope I have not disappointed you. 

I still feel equal to the task of continuing the dis- 
cussion all alone — by my solitary pen — and if you 
so decide, you shall not find me lacking, either in 
matter or in determination to set it before the public. 
But am I not selfishly taking more than my fair share 
of this causerie, like some rude fellow at a dinner 
table who absorbs all the conversation while another 
guest is eagerly waiting a chance to get his say? 
Come, my dear Wells, I am sure you must be burst- 
ing to unpack yourself, if not of any illuminating 
comment, yet, at least, of a thousand robust and 
crashing fulminations, such as you hurled at the 
head of the Moscow sailorman. Yet you subdue 
yourself to a most nugatory quiescence. I appreciate 
this sober self-abnegation on your part, but I feel 
that I ought not to take advantage of it. Aren't 
you keeping it up too long? Don't you owe it to 
the large public who allow you to do their thinking 
for them — half of Europe, as your inspired eulogist 
claims, and at least several hundreds of Americans — 
don't you owe it to them to emerge from your retire- 
ment, vault into the arena, triumphantly expound 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 75 

yourself, mercilessly confound me, and give me that 
public punishment which I so richly deserve? 

Even if you were merely to repeat the epithets 
that I have quoted above, adding perhaps your sus- 
picions that I attempted to poison your inspired 
eulogist, and crowning such irresistible arguments 
with the staggering accusation that I know nothing 
about the functions of inverted commas — even if 
you were merely to spread yourself discursively in 
these directions, it would at least show that you are 
alive to the necessity of saying something in reply 
to me. I urge you to take this line of reply because 
it would suit your method of controversy, and also 
because it is peculiarly adapted to the minds of 
that large class whom you are "thinking for." You 
mustn't lose your hold upon them. 

Come, my dear Wells, I am quite willing to stand 
aside while you subject my arguments and conclusions 
to the same analytic treatment that I have given to 
yours. You are, as I think, misleading great num- 
bers on both sides of the Atlantic in matters of such 
serious concern that the security, welfare and happi- 
ness of vast populations depend upon their right 
judgement of these matters. To the best of my 
ability I have tried to correct some of the fallacies, 
inconsistencies and confusions of* thought that form 
the basis of your social and political doctrine, and 
that are mischievously incorporated in these papers 



76 My Dear Wells 

of yours on Russia. Being set before the unthink- 
ing multitude in your numerous editions, they may 
multiply into active disorder — so infectiously epi- 
demic is wrong thinking. 

Come, my dear Wells, what have you to say in 
reply to me? The public is impatiently waiting for 
me to keep silence, and to give you a chance to make 
yourself heard. I invite you to take your fair share 
of this discussion. You won't? You positively re- 
fuse? My dear Wells, I regretfully accept the 
situation. 

And now you are longing for me to redeem my 
promise to say something about your fifth paper, 
"The Dreamer in the Kremlin." If you are building 
any extravagant hopes upon its receiving from me 
that exhaustive treatment which it so fully deserves, 
I fear you will be disappointed. For in the mean- 
time it has received ("New York Sunday Times," 
December 12, 1920), from John Spargo an exami- 
nation so ample, penetrating and convincing that you 
must be a very unreasonable man if you still clamour 
for any further lengthy discussion of it from me. 
I will thank Mr. Spargo for dealing with "The 
Dreamer in the Kremlin" so thoroughly, so sin- 
cerely, so admirably throughout, that I might well 
ask you to release me from my promise to deal with 
it myself. 

Mr. Spargo's paper is all the more welcome as, 
like yourself, he is a good Socialist. I intend to be 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 77 

a good Socialist myself, when all the rest of you 
good Socialists can agree among yourselves upon 
a plan that is suited to the facts and exigencies of 
the world wherein we live — and if you will also show 
me that plan in actual operation, even upon the 
smallest scale, among the smallest community. 

I really think you ought to be content, my dear 
Wells, with John Spargo's clearly and closely 
reasoned analysis of "The Dreamer in the Kremlin." 
Still, if you insist, and, lest I should leave rankling 
in your mind some quite excusable suspicion that I 
am failing in my obligations to you — as, indeed, is 
my own constant fear — I will humour your impor- 
tunity and make a few remarks upon this fifth paper 
of yours. 

John Spargo has most temperately, but ruthlessly 
exposed the disingenuities, the palliations, the sinful 
inconsistencies and inconsequences of your blind 
infatuation for Bolshevism. One of your London 
admirers has spoken of your u giant mind." A giant 
mind indeed it must be that can find room in its 
capacious recesses for your Titanic and Titanianic 
delusions about Bolshevism. Now, my dear Wells, 
if I have established any claim upon your gratitude, 
will you in return do me the small favour to read 
over carefully John Spargo's criticism of your entire 
attitude toward Bolshevism and its leaders? Read 
it over again and again, my dear Wells. You could 
not employ your time more profitably. 



78 My Dear Wells 

Now, having studied it, I will ask you what are 
the dominant impressions that it leaves upon you? 
Of course you are struck with the easy, masterly way 
in which John Spargo blows into indiscoverable 
atoms your jerry-built argument that the terrible 
misery and ruin of Russia have been caused, not by 
the Bolsheviki, but by the Allied policy and the col- 
lapse of Czarism. You have resolved that you will 
never again be so foolish and so self-deceiving as to 
contend that Bolshevism is not mainly guilty of this 
crazy and tragic dismemberment of the Russian 
people. 

Then you are struck with the easy way in which 
Spargo lays bare the inadequacy, inaccuracy, poverty 
and spurious pretentiousness of your knowledge of 
Russian conditions, gained chiefly in your week-end 
trip, as, with elastic precision, it has been called. 
Next, you are arrested by Spargo's sweeping ex- 
posure of the mischievous impracticability, the 
economic blindness and fallacy of your solution of 
the Russian question. I will not discredit the 
prowess of that giant mind of yours; I will not do 
you so great an injustice, my dear Wells, as to sup- 
pose it possible that, having read carefully Spargo's 
papers, you are not in perfect unison with him 
throughout. Spargo is unanswerable. If you don't 
think so, my dear Wells, set to work and answer him. 

These are some of the impressions that you have 
received from reading John Spargo's papers. But 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 79 

the dominant impression left upon you, the master 
impression that rounds and binds all these other 
impressions into perfect unity — No, don't tell me! 
Let me tell you, just to show you how responsive 
our sympathies are. The final crowning impression 
lost on your mind by a careful study of John 
Spargo's papers, is that of the stupendous absurdity 
of your presuming to write about Russia at all. And 
as for offering to guide the opinions of half Europe, 
not to speak of several hundred Americans — my 
dear good Wells, my Wells of the giant mind, 
my ready solver on the instant of all the social, 
political and religious riddles that puzzle human- 
ity, my plenipotentiary-elect and internuncio of 
all those who cannot think for themselves, — tell 
me, O self-beclouded inconsequential philosopher, 
have I not guessed aright that the prevailing impres- 
sion in your mind is that of the monstrous, trans- 
parent absurdity of your utterances in these five 
papers, and of your whole position and attitude 
toward Bolshevism and Russian affairs? You do 
see how absurd you are, don't you? How our 
thoughts jump together on all vital matters. What? 
You don't see how absurd you are? Oh, well, in 
that case I shall have to show you. 

Now please follow me closely. I won't put any 
unnecessary strain upon you. Your fifth paper 
opens : "My chief purpose in going from St. Peters- 
burg to Moscow was to see and talk to Lenin. . . . 



80 My Dear Wells 

I was disposed to be hostile to him." A very sound 
instinct, my dear Wells. This man had sent stolen 
gold to corrupt the navy that protects you. He had 
sent emissaries to kindle revolt throughout the 
British Empire and overturn the Government that 
pays your dividends. No wonder you were disposed 
to be hostile to him. A very sound instinct. It does 
you credit. Always cherish these occasional prompt- 
ings of your better self. Drop your theories, my 
dear Wells, and trust to your instincts. You will be 
a wiser man, and you will work less havoc on the 
lower levels of European and American political 
thought. 

You had, you tell us, this instinct of hostility to- 
ward Lenin. But he had the great attraction of 
being an enemy of your country, so you spent eighty 
hours, about half your limited time in Russia, 
searching for him in the very appropriate company 
of the "dunnow-wheere 'e are" * sailorman with the 
stolen silver teapot, wandering and chafing and 
swearing in vexatious peregrinations. Of course 
you may argue that these eighty hours were quite 
as well spent as the remaining hours of your trip, 
and very much better spent than the far more nu- 
merous hours that you spend in thinking for other 
people. I will yield both points to you. I like to 
give you a little encouragement. These eighty 
hours' divagations with the sailorman and the tea- 

* " 'E dunnow wheere 'e are," popular English music-hall song. 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 81 

pot, which, seeing that they kept you from formu- 
lating theories for the misguidance and misgovern- 
ment of mankind, might have been advantageously 
prolonged to eighty years — these eighty hours' 
ramblings being brought, as I think, to a premature 
untimely end, you at length found yourself seated 
face to face with Lenin. You tell us that you are 
disposed to be hostile to him, and indeed well you 
may be. Let us quote your own opinion of Lenin 
in July, 1918. (See "New York Weekly Review," 
December 15, 1920.) Writing to somebody whom 
the editor of "The Weekly Review" describes as 
the famous megaphonist, who published your letter 
in his magazine, you say: 

"Don't write me down a Bolshevik. I'm a Wil- 
sonite. For the first time in my life there is a man 
in the world that I am content to follow." — Be care- 
ful how you abdicate your leadership of political 
thought, my dear Wells — "Lenin, I can assure you, 
is a little beast, like this — " Then followed a 
drawing of the little beast, — "He (Lenin) just 
wants power, and when he gets it he has no use for it. 
. . . He doesn't eat well, or live prettily" — quite out 
of sympathy with present Russian habits, it seems — 
"or get children" — shame on him — "or care for 
beautiful things." No, he seizes them from those 
who do, and lets them moulder away in the former 
me, spare me, my dear Wells. Except the invention 
British Embassy — "He doesn't want order" — Spare 



82 My Dear Wells 

of a hew kind of honesty, surely the establishment 
of order accompanied by universal hunger and want, 
is the one supreme achievement of statesmanship 
that you claim for Lenin. You proceed, with a cruel, 
and I hope not strictly truthful, comparison of Lenin 
with your eminent Fabian brother, who is reforming 
the world by statistics — "Lenin is just a Russian Sid- 
ney Webb, a rotten little incessant egotistical in- 
triguer." — Dear ! Dear ! Such a good Fabian too ! 
Dear! Dear! — "He (Lenin, not Sidney Webb) 
ought to be killed by some moral sanitary author- 
ity." 

That was your opinion of Lenin in July, 191 8 — 
a little beast, a grasper of power which he cannot 
use, an objectionable feeder, a boorish despiser of 
pretty living, a wretched celibate, a scorner of 
beautiful things, a rotten little incessant intriguer, 
who ought to be killed in the interests of moral sani- 
tation. Since you wrote that description of Lenin 
he has devastated and depopulated Russia and in- 
directly tried to cut off your dividends. No wonder, 
my dear Wells, you entered the Kremlin with a most 
just and laudable hostility to this man. Nothing in 
all these papers becomes you so much as that. 

Now, purge your eyes and your mind. Summon 
all your latent perspicacity. Think a little for your- 
self instead of thinking for other people. Don't 
get vertiginous. You're in safe hands. Trust to 
me. I'll pull you through. 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 83 

What we have to do is to make a strict and 
searching inquiry, namely, this — What does Lenin 
do or say in this hour and a half's chat, to change this 
hostility of yours to such enthusiastic sympathy, 
admiration and whole-hearted support of his aims, 
that you advise the American people to place their 
capital and their industrial resources, to some vast 
extent, at his disposal? You insistently explain to 
them that Lenin is governing Russia on vicious, un- 
workable Marxian principles. You perceive very 
plainly, and you report that Lenin's aims cannot be 
achieved, until the "mentality of the whole people" 
is changed, until "their very souls are remoulded." 
How long do you allow for that process? Your 
usual fortnight? You further expose Lenin's policy 
by showing it to be that of fomenting a war between 
the United States and Japan. And then you make 
this monstrous proposal to the American people, 
that they should go into Bolshevist Russia with their 
"adequate" resources (could infinite resources be 
"adequate"), give recognition and help to the man 
whom you have called a little beast, a rotten little in- 
cessant and egotistical intriguer, who ought to be 
killed for the sake of moral sanitation — and become 
the supporter, the right hand and consultant of his 
crazy bankrupt government. 

Ho, all fiduciaries of common sense, avenge her 
rape ! Ho, all ye tribes of lexicographers ! Ho, all 
ye hidden powers that mint the American vernacular, 



84 My Dear [Wells 

coin me some adjective that will give forth the faint- 
est adumbration of this inexpressible monumental 
absurdity! Hallmark it, I beseech you, with some 
new form of speech ! I am dumb. 

Now, my dear Wells, you do begin to see how 
absurd you are, don't you ? I knew you would. But 
tell me, sly blagueur, what induced you to attempt 
this hoax upon American credulity? The American 
people have done you no harm except to help you to 
persuade yourself that you are a profound social 
philosopher — a generous, careless indiscretion of 
theirs, which you might readily forgive them. On 
the whole, you owe the American people a debt of 
gratitude even greater than you owe to me. No, 
no, my dear Wells; hoax yourself as much as you 
please, hoax half Europe, but spare those guileless 
Americans who are so amiably disposed towards 
you as to allow you to do their thinking for them. 

Let us return to our inquiry. 'Tenshun, my dear 
Wells! 

I have again scrupulously studied your fifth paper, 
and I am more than ever puzzled to find a reason 
that you should change from well-founded hostility 
to Lenin to cordial approbation and co-operation 
with his designs, especially with his demand for 
American capital. Obviously of all ways to destroy 
capital, the easiest is to put it anywhere within 
Lenin's reach, as the state of Russia shows. In 
your lofty aim of abolishing capital, you are nat- 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 85 

urally in sympathy with him, and if by conspiring 
with him, the pair of you can effectually destroy 
American capital, and bring the United States to 
something approaching the blessed condition of 
Russia, you would be justified in overlooking the 
fact that he is a little beast, a rotten little incessant 
intriguer, who ought to be killed, &c. 

Again, if he can, as he explains that he desires, 
bring about an alliance between America and Russia, 
break down the general good understanding between 
America and England which is the sole guarantee 
of the world's peace, and thus involve your own 
country in further grievous perplexities and inse- 
curities, then again you will claim you are justified 
in feeling a warm friendship for him, and in for- 
getting that he is a rotten little incessant intriguer, 
&c, &c, &c. Perhaps it was this noble motive that 
turned your heart to him. 

Further, you agree with Lenin that the world 
must be turned upside down, inside out, and blasted 
to pieces before it can be got to turn comfortably 
upon its own axis. That is another bond of sym- 
pathy between you and Lenin. You further agree 
that in Russia — and pray why not elsewhere? — the 
mentality of the whole people, their very souls, must 
be remoulded before we can begin to tidy up the 
world for the millennium. Lenin would bring about 
the millennium by Marxism. You would bring it 
about by Collectivism. 



86 My Dear Wells 

By the way, what is Collectivism ? I picture it as 
a kind of universal Adams Express Company that 
goes round collecting everybody's goods, the only 
difference being that Collectivism doesn't deliver 
them at any discoverable address. Lenin therefore 
appears to be a good, sound, practical and practicing 
Collectivist. You say he is a Marxist. And Sidney 
Webb, you say, is a rotten little incessant egotistical 
intriguer. I do wish all you good Socialists would 
agree among yourselves, and then we could settle 
down in earnest and begin to tidy up the world for 
the millennium. 

At any rate, you and Lenin and Sidney Webb all 
agree that everybody's property must be "collected'* 
and not returned to him. 

But never mind the means, Marxist, collectivist 
or rotten incessant intriguist, or all three, so long 
as we get our millennium. Let's have a millennium 
of some sort, at any intermediate cost of bloodshed, 
misery, disorder and starvation. Lenin thinks it 
will take ten years to get a millennium. You are not 
very definite about the date. But fortnight or ten 
years, you and Lenin both see a millennium, as plain 
as a pikestaff before your eyes, with a quite negligible 
foreground of realities. 

My dear Wells, you remind me of the heroine 
of Sheridan's "Critic." When Tilburina went mad 
in white satin she saw all sorts of things that weren't 
there. Her plain, matter-of-fact father, the Gov- 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 87 

ernor of Tilbury Fort, whom I strongly resemble 
in my steadfast refusal to see things that aren't 
there, showered a cold douche of common sense on 
the ecstatic Tilburina. He soberly addressed her: 

"Peace, daughter! 
The Spanish Fleet thou canst not see, 
Because it is not yet in sight." 

When I see you, my dear Wells, decking yourself 
in bridal anticipation of the millennium in phrases 
of white satin, to be paid for by some future Col- 
lectivist State, going distracted as Tilburina, and 
seeing all sorts of things that aren't there — when I 
see you in this condition, I feel that prose is inade- 
quate and that your necessities call upon me to deal 
with you in iambics : 

Peace, Godson ! 
This Heaven on Earth thou canst not see, 
Because it is not yet in sight. 

Well, now, I'm sure you see how absurd you are. 
That's right! Brave lad! It needs a good deal of 
courage, but it's a most wholesome state of mind. 
Many a man's worst ills come upon him from not 
knowing when he's making himself absurd. Brave 
lad! I shall make a good British citizen of you 
before I've done with you. 

You will own that I have had a rather stiff job, 
that at times you have shown yourself impervious 



88 My Dear Wells 

to reason, oblivious of logic, amorous of fallacy, 
contumacious to facts in your dealing with them. If 
I hadn't coaxed and wheedled you in my gentle 
urbane way, you might not have quite realised how 
unfathomably absurd you are — eh? What? What, 
my dear Wells! You don't even now see how 
absurd you are? 

Really, my dear Wells, this is too bad of you! 
You are imposing too much on my good nature. 
Just as I thought I'd lured you on to do a bit of 
clear thinking, if not about Russia, at least about 
yourself, you back out, and I shall have all my 
trouble over again. I have been very lenient to 
you hitherto, but there are limits. Then you don't 
even now see how absurd you are? 

What about the following passages in your fifth 
paper? 

You tell us that the elaborate arrangements 
necessary for the personal security of Lenin put him 
out of reach of Russia, and what is more serious, 
put Russia out of his reach. The filtering processes 
that have to go on, upward and downward, back- 
ward and forward, block all free communication 
between him and the Russian masses. Lenin, you 
show us, has no personal or political access to the 
people he is governing, and they have no access to 
him. Yet, my dear Wells, you advise the Americans, 
pretty innocents, to put vast sums of money and vast 
industrial equipment at the disposal of a Govern- 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 89 

ment that rules in tyrannic isolation from the people. 
It must be this principle of tyrannic isolation from 
the will of the people that makes Bolshevist govern- 
ment so attractive to that section of our English 
working classes who are urging our own Govern- 
ment to recognise and embrace Lenin and his as- 
sociates. Is democracy resolved to destroy de- 
mocracy? Look at Greece. 

Once more, my dear Wells. You offer the Amer- 
icans another inducement to make this gilt-edged 
investment. You tell us that in their endeavour to 
establish a social and economic order by means of 
taking away everybody's property, these communists, 
"at a hundred points, do not know what to do." 
They are like your sailorman with the teapot: " 'E 
dunnow where 'e are." I suppose it is this bottom- 
less confusion of governmental aims, the natural 
attraction of like to like, which again draws that 
section of our English working classes who cannot 
think for themselves, to further Bolshevist activities 
in England. They u dunnow where they are." 

Why persuade confiding Americans to place their 
surplus cash in the hands of a "dunnow-where-'e- 
are" Government? You are superb, unapproach- 
able, when you employ your "giant mind" on a 
theory. I never met a man with a better assortment 
of theories. Why not work out a theory of permut- 
able equations at Monte Carlo, take all the shiploads 
of Americans who believe in you to that paradise of 



90 My Dear Wells 

investors and give them a good time, with a good, 
solid chance of making some money? I'll come with 
you. 

Yet once again, my dear Wells. Perhaps the most 
delightful of all your waggeries in this fifth paper 
is your confession that you had never realised till 
you went to Petrograd "that the whole form and 
arrangement of a town is determined by shopping 
and marketing, and that the abolition of these things 
renders nine-tenths of the buildings in an ordinary 
town directly or indirectly meaningless and useless." 

When I read that I called out to Archibald Spof- 
forth, "Wells has got a glimmering." 

"It's about time he had," Spofforth growled. 
Spofforth's manner toward you disgusts me. It is 
so disrespectful. His tone showed that he grudged 
you even this most rudimentary perception of cause 
and' effect. 

"Listen to this," I said, and I read to Spofforth 
the succeeding passages, where you and Lenin agreed 
that by the operation of his principles, or by the 
operation of yours, in any case by the abolition of 
shopping and marketing, the existing towns would 
dissolve away and for the most part become a dead, 
forsaken waste. You don't seem to have troubled 
about what would become of the inhabitants. Pre- 
sumably nine-tenths of them would dissolve away, 
too, as indeed they are already doing. 

In the discussion of this blissful future for Russia, 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 91 

Lenin's heart warmed toward you and you forgot 
your hostility to the "little beast," the "rotten little 
incessant egotistical intriguer," &c, who "ought to 
be killed by some moral sanitary authority." How 
could you harbour hostility to a man who was not 
merely writing about pulling civilisation to pieces, 
but was actually engaged in this beneficent work? 

The hour and a half passed cheerfully away, well 
worth the eighty hours you had spent with the sailor- 
man and the teapot to obtain the interview. Lenin 
might be talking Marxian nonsense, while you were 
talking Collectivist nonsense. The great bond of 
union between you was that you were both talking 
nonsense, that perpetual freemasonry and link of 
brotherhood between all mankind. Lenin's nonsense 
may be a different kind of nonsense from your 
nonsense, but take my word for it, my dear Wells, 
both kinds of nonsense are equally mischievous, and 
tend to the destruction of civil liberty, the dissolu- 
tion of social order and the ruin of civilisation. You 
don't think that this is the tendency of your kind of 
nonsense? Ah, my dear Wells, Lenin's nonsense 
has been put into practice, and its result is apparent. 
Your nonsense hasn't been put into practice — yet. 

But at least your visit to Russia brought about 
your belated realisation of the fact, very obvious to 
everybody who had given a moment's consideration 
to the matter, that the abolition of private property 
and of the established modes and codes of commer- 



92 My Dear Wells 

cial intercourse, results in laying waste nine-tenths of 
the habitable quarters of every town, while nine- 
tenths of the wretched inhabitants perish or go to — 
Lenin knows where. Ask him. And ask the des- 
perate, poverty-stricken, miserable Russian refugees 
who have fled from him to New York. They don't 
like this new Utopia that Lenin is providing for 
them. They won't like your Utopia any better — 
when they get it. 

Well, now, my dear Wells, one plain, serious 
question — Do you, or do you not see how absurd 
you are in your pretensions to be a social philoso- 
pher? In the absence of any express denial 
from you, I shall take it for granted that you 
agree with me, and that you do see how absurd 
you are. Well, that matter is settled. I have 
marked down in this fifth paper of yours ex- 
actly seventy-six passages, phrases and inferences 
which bear more or less on this important question 
which I have asked you for your soul's good. Sev- 
enty-six there are in all. I have dealt with only a 
few of them. Will it be necessary for me to examine 
a few more, or all of them, before you give me your 
answer? I am at your service. 

If you insist that I shall proceed any further, I 
think you ought to hold out to me some prospect 
of a little bonus for myself. I have already lost, 
in my bet to Spofforth, a new, shiny silk top hat be- 
cause of my undue confidence in you. Now, great 



Becomes Even More Preposterous 93 

as are my objections to your social theories, I have 
a still greater objection to losing my money upon 
you. I think you are bound in all fairness to give 
me a chance of getting it back. I am willing to take 
the risk. I'll bet you a new, shiny silk top hat — a 
nondescript billycock for you, if you think it more 
becoming, or more symbolic of your principles — I'll 
bet you a new, shiny silk top hat that if I do examine 
these seventy-six passages in your fifth paper — or as 
many of them as are relevant — I'll bet you a new, 
shiny silk hat that when I've finished with you, 
whether or not you think yourself absurd, you won't 
be able to find ten men all over the United States 
who can think for themselves, and who will not say 
that in these papers of yours on Russia you have not 
only made yourself absurd, but that you have made 
absurdity itself ridiculous in any attempt to com- 
pete with you. 

Come, my dear Wells, be a sport. Take me on. 
Civilisation, as you complacently predict, may be in 
ruins before you have to pay up. Is it a bet? Yes, 
my dear Wells, it may be that our present civilisation 
is approaching its end, and that end will hardly be 
a peaceful one. But the dissolution of the present 
social order will not be brought about because men 
have refused to accept your "modern ideas." It 
will be brought about because, in their private lives, 
men have neglected and disobeyed certain plain old 
rules of conduct, because in their public lives they 



94 My Dear Wells 

have defied and legislated against certain first 
changeless principles and economic laws which form 
the basis of all government, of all civil order, and of 
all common social life. 

To sum up your articles on "Russia in the 
Shadows" : There is nothing in them that can help 
the Russian people to regain security, comfort and 
prosperity. There are some things that may en- 
courage them to further revolution and anarchy. 
There are many passages in them that foster treason 
to your own country; there are other passages that 
are treason to humanity; worst blot of all, there 
are not a few passages that are treason to common 
sense. 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

P. S. — -I enclose herewith a thoughtful little 
pamphlet entitled u The Folly of Having Opinions 
— a Perennial Caution to Mankind." I hope you 
will read it and treasure it. It is the last copy in 
existence, but I think you have more need of it than 
myself. The author is anonymous, but I suspect 
Spofforth. 

30th December, 1920. 



LETTER NINE. 
THE FABIAN BEANFEAST. 

My Dear Wells, — 

It may be a good habit, or it may be a bad habit, 
and this is a matter upon which you are supremely 
qualified to have an opinion — but in either case it is 
clear that I have now got into a hopelessly confirmed 
habit of writing letters to you. The persistency of 
a habit, once it has been acquired, was never more 
forcibly illustrated. I can no more help writing 
letters to you than you can help making excuses for 
Bolshevism, or filling your head with impracticable 
ideas about Collectivism. When I rise in the morn- 
ing, my first thought, even before I order my break- 
fast, is — "What can I do to set Wells right today ?" 
All my waking hours, I am seeking to put my 
thoughts into plain simple words, so that you may 
easily comprehend what I say to you. And at night, 
having nourished myself with such fare as may most 
easily promote digestion, and thus quicken my men- 
tal powers so that they may be all the more readily 
and faithfully at your service, — at night, as I lay 
me down, I ask myself, "Have I done my duty to 
Wells today ? Having accepted this responsible post 
95 



96 My Dear Wells 

of being his candid friend, have I been candid 
enough with him? Have I persuaded him to chal- 
lenge and probe his own theories, to ask himself 
how they are to be worked in this actual world 
wherein we live, and amongst its actual inhabitants? 
Have I got him to see how mischievous he is in 
trying to weaken the authority of his own govern- 
ment, and to strengthen the forces of Bolshevism? 
Have I warned him off recommending the guileless 
Americans to put their cash and resources in the 
hands of a government, which, having repudiated 
its debts, pillaged its wretched people, and destroyed 
its own capital, is now anxious to get hold of Amer- 
ican capital which it avows it will use to engage 
America in a war with Japan? Above all, have I 
convinced Wells how absurd beyond absurdity he 
is in trying to handle these matters at all? Have 
I been candid enough with Wells ?" And all the 
time I find myself yielding more and more to this 
irresistible impulse to write another letter to "My 
dear Wells." 

The fact is, I have grown to like it. Such is the 
force of habit. Now if while I am giving myself 
a pleasure, I am also doing you a service, as I assure 
myself I am, why shouldn't I keep on? It has now 
become a pressing question with me, how many of 
the remaining years of my life I shall have to spend 
in this fascinating pursuit of putting you right in 
your thinking. Perhaps you had better first decide 



The Fabian Beanfeast 97 

whether my habit of writing to "My dear Wells" 
is a good one or a bad one. For myself, I confess 
I have now become so addicted to it that, good or 
bad, I cannot break it off. I am therefore helplessly 
at the mercy of your decision. 

If you think it is a good habit, you will encourage 
me in it by continuing to furnish me with material 
such as you lavished upon me in these papers on 
Russia, and in your various budgets of "modern 
ideas." If on the other hand, you think it a bad 
habit that I have fallen into, you will say, "Henry 
Arthur Jones must be stopped. I'll cut off his sup- 
plies. I won't issue any more fallacies about Bolshe- 
vism, or indeed upon any question. From this time, 
I'll keep silence. That will settle him." 

Though I must own that such a declaration by 
you would be for the general good, and would tend 
towards less public bewilderment of thought, yet 
it would cause me some personal disappointment. 
I should miss something in life. But what could I 
do? I should have to submit. And you would 
have the satisfaction of knowing that you had cured 
me of what you considered to be a bad habit. 

In my last letter I dealt with a few of the sev- 
enty-six points you had offered for my consideration 
in your fifth paper on Russia. Being urged by this 
unconquerable, inappeasable desire to keep on writ- 
ing to "My dear Wells," I sadly reflected that this 
was the last of your papers on Russia. I felt like 



98 My Dear Wells 

the old soap boiler, who, although he had retired 
from business, could not keep away from the factory. 
I looked again over the five papers with all their 
wealth of confusion, fallacy, and perversity, and 
conning them afresh, I ruefully recognised how 
many golden opportunities I had lost through yield- 
ing to my humane prompting to spare you. I was 
thinking that, by way of keeping my hand in, I 
would bring to your notice a few more of the 
startling lapses and discrepancies that these papers 
contain, when the English mail arrived, and amongst 
my letters were Mr. Winston Churchill's reply to 
you in the "London Sunday Express" of December 
12, 1920, and your further reply to him in the same 
paper on the 19th December. 

Certainly there will be no reason for me to hark 
back upon your past delinquencies, while you con- 
tinue to provide me with such ample stores of ma- 
terial for comment as are to be found in your reply 
to Mr. Winston Churchill ("London Sunday Ex- 
press," December 19th). Why, my dear Wells, in 
this one letter alone there is matter that will give me 
hard employment for a month. It took Tristram 
Shandy two years to write the history of the first 
day of his life. I would not say that I might not 
give two years to the examination of this letter, and 
spend the time most profitably for the public and 
for yourself, while finding pleasant occupation for 
myself all the while. I am sure you never thought 



The Fabian Beanfeast 99 

when you were writing that paper that it contained 
such latent possibilities. You should realise a little 
more clearly, my dear Wells, what cogent implica- 
tions and inevitable expansions may be germinating 
in every sentence you write. 

To return to this reply of yours to Mr. Winston 
Churchill. You may ask me why I should intervene 
in your correspondence with Mr. Winston Churchill. 
For this reason, my dear Wells. I feel very strongly 
that the theories you are spreading with so much 
diligence amongst those who cannot think for them- 
selves, tend towards the further insecurity, the dis- 
integration and destruction of the British Empire. 
The diffusion of these theories is especially dan- 
gerous at the present moment, when we are beset 
with so many difficulties. Now I think that all 
things considered, the British Empire, however im- 
perfect it may be, and open to improvement in many 
ways, does yet offer to its hundreds of millions of 
citizens an average degree of security, comfort and 
happiness, immeasurably greater than they would 
enjoy if it were pulled to pieces. Do you say that 
you don't want to see it pulled to pieces? My dear 
Wells, that would be the certain result of the appli- 
cation of your theories. You will find that, inci- 
dentally and implicitly, you have proved as much in 
your tenebrous papers on Russia. Read them over 
again. 

Well, I don't want the British Empire to be 



100 My Dear Wells 

pulled to pieces, or made any more risky and uncom- 
fortable to live in than it is at present. To prevent 
you and other haters of England from pulling our 
Empire to pieces is my supreme object in writing 
you these letters. Let us never lose sight of that. 
I may indeed snatch a few chances of diverting and 
tickling you, as we go along, but that is only by 
way of giving you and myself a little relief from 
the deadly serious business in which we are en- 
gaged. 

For make no mistake, my dear Wells, upon the 
right solution of the questions at issue between you 
and me, depend the security and welfare of millions 
of our fellow creatures. And all these questions 
run into one question, that insists on being answered 
before the world can settle into something like peace 
and security. Merezhkovsky, in a piercing letter to 
you, puts that question thus — "At this moment, not 
we Russians alone, but all the peoples of the earth 
are divided into two camps — for the Bolshevists and 
against them." More than two years ago, in the 
autumn of 191 8, while that other less foul, less 
tyrannic militarism was yet uncrushed, I put that 
same question in other words to your fellow country- 
men and mine — "Patriotism or Internationalism — 
O England, which road will you take?" 

My whole argument is contained in Chapter 5 
of my "Patriotism and Popular Education." It is 



The Fabian Beanfeast 101 

open to you to study what I have there said, and to 
refute me if I am wrong. 

We will now return to your reply to Mr. Winston 
Churchill. Why, my dear Wells, you offer me an 
inexhaustible mine for my exploration. In this 
paper ("London Sunday Express," December 19, 
1920) perhaps even more than in your papers on 
Russia, you betray the texture of your mind, you 
reveal your method of controversy, you expose the 
quality of your arguments, and what is more relative 
to my general purpose, you give us a measure of 
your competence to think for other people. For all 
these reasons, a searching examination of your reply 
to Mr. Churchill will have a permanent interest and 
value beyond the discussion of the appertaining facts. 
It will remain as a Wellsometer, always available 
for reference whenever you launch your theories on 
mankind. 

Let us first glance at Mr. Churchill's paper 
("London Sunday Express," December 5, 1920). 
He rapidly sketches your attitude towards Bolshe- 
vism, and then as rapidly reviews the leading move- 
ments and developments of civilization that brought 
about a great accumulation of world wealth and pros- 
perity at the beginning of this century. He shows 
that Bolshevism and its kindred heresies are a re- 
versal of those alleviations and bettering of the con- 
ditions of the masses, which had accompanied the 



102 My Dear Wells 

general prosperity of the two or three preceding gen- 
erations. In one short apt sentence, he plainly sets 
before this distracted world the alternative result 
that will follow from its adoption or refusal of 
Merezhkovsky's "Bolshevism or Anti-Bolshevism," 
or as I have put it, "Patriotism or Internationalism." 
My formula is fundamentally the same as Merezh- 
kovsky's. According as the nations choose the one 
road or the other, Mr. Churchill tells them in a 
dozen words what will be the inevitable alternative 
result : 

A WORLD OF EQUALLY HUNGRY SLAVES 

or 

A WORLD OF UNEQUALLY PROSPEROUS FREEMEN. 

With much force Mr. Churchill exhibits the 
parallel between Cancer in the human body and 
Bolshevism in the social and political economy of 
a nation. The whole paper is a clear, swift, suc- 
cinct statement of the matter in debate. How do 
you deal with it? Mr. Churchill has attacked your 
main positions. Let us study your counter-attack. 
I am not here mainly concerned with the facts of the 
case, or with the conclusions you and Mr. Churchill 
draw from them. They have been already discussed 
between us. I am here concerned to question and to 
test your ability to deal with any difficult questions 



The Fabian Beanfeast 103 

of politics or economics whatsoever; your compe- 
tence to think for "half Europe," or even for the 
smallest number of people who cannot think for 
themselves; indeed I hope I shall go so far as to 
get you to share my doubt as to whether you are 
able to think clearly for yourself, without severe 
guidance. I have thus defined what is, for the time, 
the object of our deliberations. 'Tenshun, my dear 
Wells ! 

Throwing one sweeping penetrating glance over 
the whole field of Bolshevism, the main questions 
about it, questions that concern the whole world, are 
these : 

First question, and most important because it must 
be answered before we can safely handle the other 
questions: — Is Bolshevism firmly established? Is 
it going to last? Upon this most urgent question 
of all, you tell us that you hold two directly con- 
tradictory opinions. In your third paper you say: 
"To-day the Bolshevist government sits, I believe, 
in Moscow, as firmly established as any Govern- 
ment in Europe — " Farther on in the same paper 
you say : "If we help to pull down the by no means 
firmly established government in Moscow — " 
With incredible obscurity of thought and sublime 
audacity of assertion, your reply to this first urgent 
question is as follows: "Bolshevism is firmly es- 
tablished. Bolshevism is not firmly established. It 



104 My Dear Wells 

is going to last. It is not going to last. Just which- 
ever suits the exigencies of my theory for the 
moment." 

Second question: — If Bolshevism is not firmly 
established, how long is it going to last, and how 
far is it likely to spread? 

Third question: — What will be the consequences 
and reactions of Bolshevism on the rest of the 
world? 

Fourth question: — How far will it be safe and 
wise for the governments of Western Europe, and 
more especially for America, to recognise Bolshe- 
vism, make treaties with it, support it, and trade 
with it? What securities can Bolshevism offer that it 
will fulfil any political and commercial obligations? 

These four groups of questions cover all the 
essential matters of the debate in which you, Mr. 
John Spargo, Mr. Winston Churchill and myself 
have been engaged. All the other matters that have 
been brought into discussion are merely secondary, 
illustrative, incidental, or comparatively irrelevant 
and negligible. 

Now please take Mr. Churchill's article ("London 
Sunday Express," Dec. 5, 1920) and read it care- 
fully through. You will find that, with the excep- 
tion of a few opening compliments to yourself, Mr. 
Churchill is mainly and intently occupied throughout 
his paper in the discussion of the four groups of 



The Fabian Beanfeast 105 

questions that I have marked out above. He does 
not wander away in vague and wild digressions. As 
schoolboys say, he is u on to the ball" all the time. 

Now I will ask you to take up your own reply to 
Mr. Churchill ("London Sunday Express," Dec. 12, 
1920). Please to spread it in front of you and 
analyze it. I find that your article contains 537 
printed lines. You are debating with your opponent 
upon the most serious of all questions that just now 
concern mankind. How many lines of your paper 
would you say should be given to argument upon 
the matters at issue? Fix in your mind the least 
number of lines out of 537, that your readers might 
reasonably expect you to set apart for plain simple 
argument that makes an appeal to their judicial 
faculties. 

My dear Wells, there is scarcely one line in your 
whole paper that makes such an appeal. There are 
17 lines which you might doubtfully claim as argu- 
ment, and which I will allow you. Of the remain- 
ing 520 lines, you give no less than 165, almost a 
third of the whole paper, to personal detraction, 
insinuation, comment and criticism relating to Mr. 
Churchill, his career, his character, his mistakes, his 
political aims and ambitions, — all of these 165 lines 
widely away from the matter in debate. Of the 
remaining 355 lines, you are concerned in 149 of 
them with your own theories, with slipping into the 



106 My Dear Wells 

text your own stock notions and vague unworkable 
idealisms, assuming every one of them to be verified, 
unquestionable, and practical. Incidentally you dis- 
cover to us that your mind is a mechanical apparatus 
that works upon facts with a spasmodic reversible 
action, and tosses them out from it in hopeless self- 
contradictions and confusions. The remaining 206 
lines of your paper are taken up with unclassifiable 
generalities and irrelevancies. Thus an analysis of 
the 537 lines of your paper shows the following 
results : 

17 lines are given to doubtful argument. 

165 lines, nearly a third, to defaming Mr. Churchill. 

149 lines to illogical advancement of your own theories. 

206 lines to general unclassifiable irrelevancies. 

. 537 lines— TOTAL. 

Do you say that in the 537 lines, there is a single 
one more than 17 that can be legitimately classed as 
argument? I'll make you a handsome offer. I will 
give you one pound sterling, to be spent in charity, 
for every line above 17 that you can reasonably 
claim as argument dealing with the questions at issue. 
The chances that I keep on offering you ! 

Surely, my dear Wells, you will be able to find 
some thirty or forty additional lines of argument, 
so that whenever you make one of your periodical 



The Fabian Beanfeast 107 

betrumpeted descents upon the world with a brand 
new gospel of philosophy, history, sociology or reli- 
gion, you will be able to boast that at least a tenth 
part of it is worth some consideration. 

Well, what do you say to my offer? You accept 
it of course, partly for the sake of your reputation, 
but chiefly for the sake of charity. Let us think in 
what charitable way we shall spend these thirty or 
forty, or perhaps a hundred pounds, that you will 
mulct me for my carelessness in overlooking your 
additional lines of argument. 

We could have a lot of ragged children or aged 
couples to tea. It doesn't sound very lively. Or 
we could give a splendid treat to wounded soldiers. 
But we needn't bother about wounded soldiers, now 
that the war is over. They are fast becoming a 
nuisance. Besides, the trade unions might object to 
our relieving wounded soldiers. 

What do you suggest? There are the hospitals. 
There are thousands of necessitous poor, and there 
will be thousands more as we progressively educate 
our working classes to avoid manual labour. Now 
that there is so much unemployment in the house 
building trades, we might find a few deserving brick- 
layers — Stop ! I've got it. Charity begins at home. 
What has become of the Fabian Society? 

I suppose it is still in existence, and I suppose it 
consists of more than three members, although I've 



108 My Dear Wells 

never heard of more than three. The general body 
of the Fabian Society must be badly in need of a 
little relaxation after a course of your philosophy 
and Mr. Sidney Webb's statistics. We'll give the 
Fabian Society a picnic, eh? A thorough jolly good 
outing, where we shall not only be doing them a 
charity, but getting some fun for ourselves. 

Then it's settled we spend the thirty, forty, or 
hundred pounds you are going to get out of me, in 
giving the Fabian Society a picnic. We won't call 
it a picnic. We'll call it a beanfeast. It sounds 
jollier, and it's more democratic. Not a mere 
ordinary beanfeast, but quite a classy kind of 
beanfeast. We'll have a four-in-hand and take 
them down to Hampton Court, and on to see 
Windsor Castle. How many Fabians are there? 
Will one coach hold them all ? Never mind. One, 
two, a dozen coaches if necessary. I hope you'll find 
enough additional lines of argument amongst the 
537 to cover the expenses. If you don't, I'll stand all 
the costs of the outing. I'm determined to give the 
Fabians a beanfeast. Tally-ho ! Tally-ho ! 

Now let's arrange the details. We'll have a band. 
I should like it to play national airs. It's a long time 
since the Fabians have heard them. As I provide 
the beanfeast, I really must insist on driving the 
coach. I'll get a new coaching rig-out for the occa- 
sion, and I shall stick a Union Jack in my beaver 



The Fabian Beanfeast 109 

hat. It would be a pleasing concession to their host, 
if the Fabians would do the same. And we'll have 
some very spirited horses, and give them — and the 
Fabians — beans. 

Tally-ho ! Tally-ho ! 

You are suspecting that this is a cunning design 
of mine to lure the Fabians on to the top of a coach, 
and turn them all over into a ditch. Not at all, my 
dear Wells. It's true that I've never driven a four- 
in-hand, but the Fabians will be vastly more safe in 
my care than u half of Europe" is in yours. 

One or two more details. No prostitution of our 
natural good sense to statistics, or anarchic sociol- 
ogy, or International vagaries, but just a day of 
sheer rollicking amongst vivid live human realities. 

Tally-ho ! Tally-ho ! 

And as we break up, after a day, which though 
devoted to roaring frolic, will yet I hope convey a 
profound moral lesson to the Fabians, — before we 
part, we will stand in a circle and sing the National 
Anthem. You won't sing the National Anthem? 
I think you will, after a while, if I only handle you 
long enough and suavely enough. You might begin 
practicing. 

Hey! Hey! Hey! All this while, I've been for- 
getting that this Fabian beanfeast depends upon your 
finding that in your discourse of 537 lines, there are 
more than 17 of them that attempt to grapple with 



no My Dear Wells 

your subject. Search it again. How many more 
can you find? My cheque book is on the table before 
me. Send in your claim. 

Expectantly yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
New York City, 
January 13, 1921. 

In answer to my repeated invitations to Mr. Wells 
to take some share in this controversy, he was so 
obliging as to send a letter to the London Evening 
Standard of December 2$, 1920. As I anticipated, 
he did not attempt to meet me in argument. He 
followed the course I had suggested to him (see Let- 
ter 8, p. 73) and called me a liar — this time an "out- 
and-out liar." He accused me of "vanity," of 
"trading on the careless hospitalities of his younger 
days." He spoke of my heart being "full of 
malice," of my having an "incurable grudge" against 
him, of my "dreary hostility " of my "everlasting 
hooting and lying," with other like elegancies of 
controversy. A little inconsistently, he complained 
that I bored him, and he suggested to his readers 
that they should also feel bored with me. He com- 
pared me with a foghorn — "You never know when 
the damned thing won't be hooting again." But he 
never attempted to meet me in argument. Indeed 
in a letter to the New York Times of 6th January 



The Fabian Beanfeast ill 

IQ2I, Mr. Wells magnificently announced, "I never 
argue with Mr. H. A. Jones." We must allow Mr. 
Wells to be the best judge of his own limitations. 

H. A. J. 



LETTER TEN. 

THE WICKED MR. WINSTON 
CHURCHILL. 

My Dear Wells, — 

The wise men of Laputa, as Gulliver tells us, 
were so absorbed in their own ideas, and so 
rapt away from the obvious facts under their 
nose, that they needed a constant attendant to 
recall them to the actualities of life, so that they 
might not damage themselves by knocking their 
heads against any post, or by falling over any 
precipice that was in their way. These attend- 
ants carried a blown bladder, fastened like a flail at 
the end of a stick, and filled with dry peas or little 
pebbles. They were called "flappers" — a name 
which is now used to denote a much less useful class 
of persons. Whenever it was necessary to waken 
a Laputan philosopher to some obstacle in his path, 
or get him to abandon his vagaries and listen to 
serious discourse, his flapper would give him a slap 
on the face with the bladder. 

Being impressed with your startling resemblance 
to the Laputan philosophers, I resolved that I would 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 1 13 

put aside less urgent business and constitute myself 
your flapper — in the Laputan sense. 

I had just come to this decision, when I received a 
copy of the "Evening Standard" of Dec. 28, 1920, 
containing your letter to the editor which begins 
thus: "Sir, being written at by Mr. H. A. Jones 
is like living near some sea channel with a foghorn. 
You never know when the damned thing won't begin 
hooting again." 

I was struck with the appropriateness of your 
comparison of myself to a foghorn. My dear 
Wells, the image is perfect. Instantly I pictured 
you as some dreadful succubus of compact palpable 
fog, haunting and waylaying ships on the main ocean 
highways, exhaling mists and vapours of Collec- 
tivism, and enticing victims from "half Europe" on 
to the sand-banks of Internationalism. Naturally 
you find a foghorn annoying, and wish the "damned 
thing" would stop. 

Foghorns have always had a peculiar attraction 
for me. The moment you suggested I should be 
one, I leaped at the chance. It then occurred to me 
that I had just undertaken the arduous post of being 
your "flapper" — in the Laputan sense. The ques- 
tion is, can I combine the rather incongruous duties 
of flapper and foghorn? Why not? Without for 
a moment remitting my personal attendance upon 
your heedless steps, I can at the same time give out 
loud prolonged warnings to all whom you have 



114 My Dear Wells 

enshrouded in fog, "Keep off the sand-banks of 
Internationalism." 

My dear Wells, you shall not say that I failed 
you. I accept the double responsibility. I will be 
both flapper and foghorn. I am quite taken with 
the idea of being a foghorn. The only fault of a 
foghorn is its tiresome tautophony. Its possibilities 
as a musical instrument have never been tested. I 
intend to be quite a new kind of foghorn. I shall 
not only give out some tremendous booms and hoots 
and groans and blasts and howls, but I shall also 
play a few lively tunes — you will be inclined to dance 
to them. 

Your letter proceeds: "Mr. Jones trades on the 
careless hospitalities of my younger days to address 
me as 'My dear Wells'." In years gone by I did 
indeed listen on several evenings to your philosophy, 
and also to your performances on the pianola. I did 
not then criticize your philosophy, but I did then, and 
can now, honestly praise you as a master on the 
pianola. You always knew exactly what tunes it 
was going to play, and you played it with such 
delicacy and sureness of touch that I found it less 
mechanical than your philosophy. O, if you had as 
sovereign a command of social philosophy as you 
have of the pianola ! 

If I was so forgetful as not to return your hos- 
pitality, I hope you will redress the wrongs I have 
done you in that respect by coming with a ferocious 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 115 

appetite on the day when I take the Fabians to their 
beanfeast at Windsor. I do not think you should 
object to my calling you "My dear Wells." To me 
there is something caressing in the sound. I use it 
to show you how wrongly you estimate me, when 
you say that my heart "seems full of malice," and 
that I have an "incurable grudge" against you. 
Believe me, my dear Wells, I have no incurable 
grudge, or any personal malice or ill will towards 
you, beyond the just fierce anger that I feel against 
all the tribe of theorists, sophists, casuists, 
wordsters, factdodgers, logicdodgers, truthdodgers, 
phrase-mongers, pettifoggers, doctrinaires, futili- 
tarians and impossiblists, who "think" like you, and 
always "think" against England; who put scales on 
their eyes, and wax in their ears, and poison on their 
tongues to prove that England is always in the wrong 
and that her enemies are always in the right. I want 
to strike at them all through you. I want to show 
the quality of their "thinking" when they "think" 
against their country, and when in these perilous 
times, they seek to multiply her embarrassments and 
insecurities, and give her over to disorder and revo- 
lution. But you are a bad judge of character, my 
dear Wells, if you think that beyond this feeling I 
have any personal malice against you. All that I 
am trying to do is to make you a good British citi- 
zen. Submit patiently to the process, and you will 
find it the less grievous. 



n6 My Dear Wells 

You complain that I have not read the whole of 
your writings. Surely you would not have me criti- 
cize those works of yours which I have not read. 
You will admit that I am doing ample justice to 
such of them as have come in my way. I am quite 
ready to believe that those numerous volumes of 
yours which I have not read, contain equally rich 
veins of sophistry and fallacy which it may be equally 
necessary for me to investigate. Bide your time, 
my dear Wells. Let me finish with those writings 
of yours which I have studied, and I will then turn 
my attention to the others. 

You also complain that these letters of mine bore 
you. My dear Wells, I am always pointing out to 
you the most obvious things which you have failed 
to notice. Let me point out to you the most obvious 
thing of all — that if my letters bore you, you have 
the easiest and plainest way of escape. Why not 
take it? 

You again call me a liar — nay, this time it seems 
that I am not only a liar, but I am an "out-and-out 
liar." You will recall that in one of my recent 
letters, I advised you to take this line of reply to 
me. I felt sure you would follow my advice. 

And now, having touched upon the most interest- 
ing points in your letter to the "Evening Standard" 
of Dec. 28th, we may return to the matters that 
were engaging us when I finished my last letter. We 
arranged that we would take your reply to Mr. 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 117 

Winston Churchill as the basis of a strict inquiry into 
your methods of "thinking for half Europe," and 
into your capacity for performing this stupendous 
intellectual operation — in short as a Wellsometer. 
Henceforth we are not concerned with the Bolshevist 
leaders or Bolshevist principles, except as these may 
incidentally serve to guide us in our inquiry. We 
have now addressed ourselves to the more general 
and more important question of the quality and 
value of your statements, arguments and theories as 
a popular social and political philosopher. 

At the end of my last letter, I was uncertain 
whether you would accept my suggestion that you 
should begin to practise the National Anthem, or 
whether you would examine your reply to Mr. 
Winston Churchill with the object of discovering 
how many lines, more than a doubtful 17 out of 
the 537 it contained — you could claim as argument 
upon the matters in debate. Doubtless you are at 
this moment busily occupied in this search, with the 
view of providing the Fabian brotherhood with a 
super-magnificent beanfeast at my expense. You 
will let me know the result of your search. 

Meantime we will take a glance at the 165 lines, 
out of the 537, which you allot to the personal 
detraction and abuse of Mr. Churchill. I do not 
know him, but he seems to be a very wicked, ambi- 
tious, reckless man. When I read your description 
of him, I felt grateful to Providence that my lot had 



li8 My Dear Wells 

been cast, not with selfish, ambitious politicians, but 
amongst the serene altruisms of the theatre, where 
the personal aims and ambitions of actors and 
actresses are never allowed to interfere with the 
success of the play, or with the interests of the 
British drama. 

But I am sorry to learn that Mr. Churchill's con- 
duct is so bad that, in your reply to him, you felt 
obliged to enlarge upon it to the extent of 165 lines, 
which only left you 17 lines for argument on the 
matters you are disputing with him. Sad, sad, it is, 
my dear Wells, to reflect upon what stuff our Cabi- 
net Ministers are made of. You never know what 
they are up to. Sad, sad it is, my dear Wells, that 
we have only the staple of human nature from 
whence to choose our politicians, our public officials, 
our clergymen, and even our Socialists and Inter- 
nationalists. Why, you even describe your eminent 
Fabian brother as a "rotten little incessant egotis- 
tical intriguer." Sad, sad it is ! Such a good Fabian 
too ! And yet apparently almost as undesirable a 
man to manage our affairs for us as Mr. Churchill 
himself. Sad, sad it is! 

In your recent exhaustive researches in world his- 
tory, have you met with any instance where the 
administration of any country was not more or less 
pervaded by elements of personal ambition and self- 
seeking? I am anxious to know how you are going 
to keep them out of the government of your 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 119 

Collectivist State. If you don't take care, my dear 
Wells, these rotten little incessant egotistical 
intriguers (Lenin, to wit), and these dominant 
energetic ambitious adventurers will seize the reins 
of power in your Collectivist Commonwealth, and 
make it anything but the universal happy garden 
city that you have hatched in your head; while in 
addition to their malign overseership, your Collec- 
tivist State will be liable to its own peculiar evils. 
Its vast bureaucracy will be saturated with the 
dull lethargic incompetence and multiplying corrup- 
tion that are inseparable from the State employment 
of great numbers in the business of looking after 
other people's business. You complain of the hide- 
bound stupidity and complacent ignorance of our 
present government staffs. Wait till you get your 
Collectivist State with an army of officials five or 
ten times as great. Surely the blundering waste and 
expense attendant upon the Socialistic legislation 
that was necessarily introduced during the war, has 
taught us a stern and final lesson. Not only has it 
shown us how incompetent the State is to manage 
all our property and all our affairs, but it has forced 
us to the other extreme of asking, "Is there any 
business at all that the State can handle for us, except 
at a greater ultimate cost to the community, than it 
could be handled by private persons who would be 
rewarded according to the measure, amount and 
value of the work they do for the public?" 



120 My Dear Wells 

I don't see, my dear Wells, how your Collectivistic 
State can be got to work, unless you personally 
superintend every detail of its working, in the inter- 
vals of launching your successive newspaper booms. 
Only by your constant supervision will you be able 
to exclude reckless wicked men of the Churchill type 
from elbowing their way into the management of the 
concern. I told you there are wicked men in the 
world who won't let your theories work. And from 
what you say of Mr. Winston Churchill, he seems 
to be one of them. How shall we get into posses- 
sion of our happy contented Collectivist State, unless 
all selfish aims and ambitions are ruled out of order 
by a vote of the majority? 

I do wish you would consider this question, my 
dear Wells. I did advise you not to take that trip 
to , Russia. But you would go. How much more 
profitably and comfortably you could have spent 
your time, if instead of wandering about Moscow in 
the company of a "dunnow-wheere-'e-are" sailorman 
with a stolen teapot, and using bad language at him'' 
— if instead of wasting your precious hours in these 
cheerless perambulations and profane maledictions, 
you had stayed at home, and had seated yourself 
cosily at your own fireside, in quiet darkened sur- 
roundings favourable to thought, and had there 
remained pondering and turning over in your giant 
mind the questions I am putting to you. 

It is not too late. You can even now begin to 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 121 

study the questions that you are writing about at 
such length in the papers. First ask yourself this: 
"There being in the world a number of wicked, 
ambitious men like Winston Churchill, how can I 
keep them out of the administration of my Collectiv- 
ist Commonwealth, seeing that these, and also 
'rotten little incessant egotistical intriguers,' are the 
kind of men who are apt to push themselves to the 
front in any government, and who will be doubly 
harmful, nay absolutely destructive, in any Collectiv- 
ist State which is founded upon the theory that it will 
be perpetually administered by perfectly capable, 
perfectly honest statesmen who will have no selfish 
aims or personal ambitions ?" That, my dear Wells, 
is one of the questions you have to ask yourself. 

Further, and more important, is this question: 
"How can I get the vast majority of men and women 
to be so obliging, within the next fortnight, or say 
six months, as to change their natural instincts, 
desires, and motives for action, so thoroughly and 
so completely that for the future they will work 
heartily for the advancement of my theories and 
for the welfare of my Collectivist State, instead of 
working for themselves, for their wives and fami- 
lies, for the advancement of their own interests and 
the increase of their own comforts and pleasures?" 

That is the second question you have to ask your- 
self. I do not say that great numbers of our fellow 
men are not capable of exalted heroisms and self- 



122 My Dear Wells 

sacrifices. The war plainly showed it. Our English 
working men and women in their rallies to the 
defence of their class interests and their trade 
unions, constantly prove that they are possessed 
of splendid endurance, courage, heroism, self- 
denial for their comrades, unflinching devotion to a 
cause. In themselves these are very noble qualities. 
They are, however, most mischievous and dangerous 
when they are used to back the purpose of any one 
class in a nation to paralyze and exterminate the 
other classes. For such a purpose cannot be 
achieved without bringing all classes in the nation, 
that is the nation itself, to progressive misery and 
ruin. 

This is the plain object lesson and warning which 
Russia is offering today to our English working men. 
For them, for their behoof, has this spectacle, this 
passion play of a whole people vicariously bearing 
the sins of false thinkers and false teachers, this 
infernal Calvary with its millions of martyrs — for 
the fixed contemplation of our English working men 
has this horrible pageant of misery, crime, disease, 
starvation and ruin, been designed and played sans 
intermission, night and day, for three years with 
a continent for a stage. And we know not how 
many acts have yet to be played — will the curtain 
never be rung down that we may go to our homes 
and sleep in our beds? For you, O English work- 
ing men, has this mad interminable extravaganza of 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 123 

murder and dance and chorus of demons been 
arranged, and in all its details most perfectly stage 
managed, most perfectly played — there's a terrible 
moral in it all — will you give heed? I take up my 
New York paper, and I read that you are shouting 
down Mr. Clynes and clamouring for Soviets. 

You didn't quite catch the meaning of it all, my 
dear Wells. Your head was full of your theories, 
so you hobnobbed in the Kremlin with the rotten 
little incessant egotistical intriguer, and compared 
respective Utopias with him. You come back to 
your own country, and you imagine that you can use 
these great and noble qualities which great numbers 
of our English working men undoubtedly possess — 
endurance, fortitude, heroism, self-denial, comrade- 
ship, devotion to a cause — you imagine that you can 
use these great qualities possessed by a more or less 
considerable section of our working men, to inflame 
the whole mass of them to start a brand new 
Collectivist International State, founded upon your 
theory that the bulk of mankind can be got to shape 
their conduct and regulate their lives for the benefit 
of your State ; that is, to disregard and renounce all 
their individual interests that are in opposition to 
the general welfare of your State; that is, to act 
from motives quite contrary to the main motives 
which through all ages have mainly prompted the 
actions of the majority of mankind. 

You are not in communion with facts, my dear 



124 My Dear Wells 

Wells. You are in communion with your whimsies. 
There may he great alleviations and betterment of 
the average lot of our working men — I wish it with 
all my heart. There may be great and beneficent 
changes brought about by their combination and 
cooperation in such movements as are for the general 
welfare of their own State, and in certain limited 
ways for the welfare of some other States. But 
this cooperation and combination will be beneficial 
to them, only as far as it does not shake and weaken 
the authority of their own government, the security 
of their own State. Any attempt to start your 
International Collectivist State could only be suc- 
cessful in so far as it disintegrated and destroyed 
the government that does actually protect us all 
from anarchy and chaos; protects our working men 
from living in such hunger and misery and enslave- 
ment as the Russian workers are now enduring; 
and incidentally does also, let me again remind you, 
secure your own enjoyment of your motor car and 
cosy dividends. Let this last consideration have 
due weight with you. 

The very great majority of mankind, my dear 
Wells, will never act from such motives as your 
Collectivist State presupposes they will suddenly 
acquire, will never guide their general conduct with 
the view of fitting it to the necessities of your theo- 
ries. Great numbers of men in all nations are capa- 
ble, under stress and emergency, of rising to lofty 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill 125 

united efforts of heroism, self-sacrifice and endur- 
ance, and of banding themselves in closest fellow- 
ship and aim for some general good beyond their 
own immediate palpable self-interest. But these 
efforts last ojily for a period, and are followed by 
reaction and lassitude. The very great majority 
of men will continue to act mainly from the same 
motives that have always prompted men in all ages 
and all countries. 

Consider all these things carefully, my dear Wells, 
and range them under the headings of the two ques- 
tions which I have proposed above for your solution. 
Wrap yourself in undisturbed seclusion that you may 
focus all your percipience upon them. Discard your 
theories and wrestle with the facts. Take a fort- 
night to solve these questions before you again bring 
them before the public. Take a month. Take a 
year. If necessary, take the remainder of your life. 

You may say that it is not necessary for you to 
study these questions. The cheapjack who sold 
shilling razors at a country fair, explained to an 
indignant rustic purchaser that his razors were not 
meant to shave, but to sell. After that he bolted 
from the fair. You may reply that your Collectivist 
State is not meant to work, but to sell to the world 
public. Before they find out what you have sold 
them, you will have bolted from the fair. When the 
revolution that you are invoking actually comes, I 
cannot imagine, my dear Wells, that you will take 



126 My Dear Wells 

any active leadership or participation in it. Field- 
ing's poet, seeing that fighting had begun in the inn 
parlour, and that damaged heads and broken noses 
were indicated, prudently retired to the loft above, 
and took merely a watching literary interest in the 
bloody scrimmage below. 

To return for a moment to this wicked Mr. 
Winston Churchill. In the 165 lines that you set 
apart for dissection of his private and political 
character, you clearly show that he is a man who 
needs very close watching. We will let it rest there 
for the time, and inquire further about him when 
we make the careful detailed examination of your 
reply to him that we have promised ourselves. 
Looped and intertwined with the various charges you 
make against Mr. Churchill, and equally remote 
from the questions you make believe to dispute with 
him, are the 149 lines in your paper which you give 
to the insinuation, dissemination and promulgation 
of your own theories. These also will afford us 
much absorbing matter for consideration. 

Indeed the whole paper is so pregnant with sug- 
gestion and implication that I begin to ask myself 
whether its adequate discussion may not take up 
even more than the two years which was the limit 
of my original estimate. When I say that your 
reply to Mr. Churchill is pregnant, I do not mean 
that it labours to bring forth a shapely body of 



The Wicked Mr. Winston Churchill. 127 

living thought, but that it bulges and protuberates 
with an internal yeasty superfoetation of misbegot- 
ten and malformed fallacies and irrelevancies — 
what the old midwives used to call a false concep- 
tion. I know that the latest school of gynecologists 
tell us that there is no such thing as a false con- 
ception. I challenge them on the point, and ask 
them to read your reply to Mr. Churchill. 

However, we have settled that we will subject 
the paper to a searching examination, and find out 
its exact texture and composition and value. Let us 
hope that it will not be necessary for us to spend 
two years in the task. In your "Evening Standard" 
letter, with something less than your usual extreme 
delicacy of feeling and expression, you remind me 
that the years are passing with me. In apportion- 
ing their diminished remainder, I find that, great 
and urgent as your necessities are, I cannot allot 
more than three years to the business of making a 
good British citizen of you. If at the end of three 
years I have not made a good British citizen of you, 
I shall have to give you up. Since you wish me to 
study your other works on social philosophy, it is 
clear that we must economize the time we spend 
upon your reply to Mr. Churchill. Let us now set 
about its careful examination, always keeping in 
mind that our main object is to use it as a gauge 
of your capacity to "think for half Europe," or for 



128 My Dear Wells 

whatever number of persons there may be in either 
hemisphere who cannot think for themselves. 
Yours hopefully, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
January 23, 1921. 



LETTER ELEVEN. 
THE FOGHORN TUNES UP. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I am sometimes tempted to envy those writers 
who, like yourself, have gained a world-wide repu- 
tation by thinking for people who cannot think for 
themselves. Consider how easy your lot is compared 
with my own. For instance, while writing these 
letters to you, I am obliged to weigh every sentence, 
and put it into relation, or at least to take care that 
it does not conflict with those eternal rules of pri- 
vate conduct, and first principles of social order and 
government whereby men and nations throughout all 
the past have guided themselves and established 
themselves in peace, security and prosperous con- 
tent. You are under no such obligations. You need 
only to blaze abroad your "modern ideas, " careless 
as to whether they conform with these immitigable 
eternal laws; careless as to whether your various 
utterances are consistent with each other, or with 
plain facts; careless as to whether your theories can 
be worked; guided, so far as I can see, by only two 
firm intelligible principles, those of burning down 
129 



130 My Dear Wells 

employers' shops, and seizing what remains of 
other people's property. 

If you will take the trouble to examine your sys- 
tem of social philosophy, you will find that it is based 
on these two cardinal principles. You tell us that 
as a young man, you would have set fire to your 
employer's shop if you had not been convinced that 
it was overinsured — perhaps the most charming of 
all the many pieces of self-revelation you give us in 
your papers on Russia. 

Now my dear Wells, I have not a word to say in 
the abstract against burning down employers' shops. 
I am willing to consider it as a practical way of 
relieving and removing social wrongs. Doubtless 
a good many employers richly deserve such retribu- 
tion. I have only one question to ask about burning 
down employers' shops. Does it — to use the current 
misleading term — does it "reconstruct" society with 
advantage to working men? Very obviously it does 
not. Very obviously it never will. It merely 
deprives the workers of their means of livelihood 
until new employers get new capital and build new 
shops. Then the world wags again, but for a time 
less comfortably for the workers. 

But why not do away with employers altogether ? 
Ah ! that's what they said in Russia. 

When a man sits down to think for other people 
I take it the only question he needs ask himself is : 
"What do they wish to believe ?" Great numbers of 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 131 

our population wish to believe that burning down 
their employers' shops will "reconstruct" society on 
a basis more favourable to themselves. Great num- 
bers of our masses have had this doctrine so donged 
into their ears, and from thence into the vacuities 
of their cerebrums, that their tongues incessantly 
clatter it forth as the first axiom of political science. 

When I say "burning down employers' shops," I 
use it as a generic term to cover all those many sup- 
plementary devices and dishonesties which, especially 
since the war, our workers have been encouraged to 
practise in order to thwart their employers, and thus 
to diminish the production of those necessaries upon 
which their own livelihood and comfort depend. 
Of course if burning down our employers' shops 
does actually "reconstruct" society, it is clearly a 
much simpler and easier method than the old- 
fashioned one of hard work. 

Great numbers of our population wish to believe 
in this new-fashioned way of "reconstructing" society 
according to "modern ideas." Great numbers of 
them already do believe in it, and practise it. 
Therefore the writer who "thinks for" these masses, 
has only to "think for" them according to their own 
wishes and notions and beliefs. My dear Wells, 
how enviable and easy is your lot compared with 
mine ! As we go through your reply to Mr. 
Churchill, we shall find that the 149 lines in it which 
are given to the exploitation of your own theories, 



132 My Dear Wells 

are largely informed and coloured by this kind of 
"thinking." 

Further, my dear Wells, in writing these letters 
to you, I am obliged to take the most scrupulous 
care not to misrepresent you, or distort facts to suit 
my whimsies. In these respects, I may modestly 
claim that I show to some advantage compared with 
yourself. For whereas I have been sorrowfully 
compelled to point out to you a large number of your 
grievous lapses, self-contradictions and inconsisten- 
cies, you have so far been able to detect only one 
trifling displacement of an adjective in the entire 
course of my letters to you. When I was so negli- 
gent as to say that you had called Lenin the "beloved 
Lenin," while as a matter of fact you had called him 
"Lenin, beloved," you swooped down upon me, and 
branded it in the "New York Times" as "Just a lie," 
and in the "London Evening Standard" as "an out- 
and-out lie." I was greatly reassured, for you clearly 
showed me that with this microscopic exception, I 
had not laid myself open to any impeachment in my 
conduct of this controversy. 

However, you did well to put me on my guard. 
In future I will take care to put your adjectives on 
the right side of your nouns. You have given me 
a warning that it will be dangerous for me to deviate 
a hair's breadth from the strictest accuracy of quo- 
tation and the most searching veracity of comment. 
When I try to imagine what names you would have 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 133 

called me, what floods of vituperative wrath you 
would have poured upon me if I had really misrep- 
resented you, I tremble in my cuticle. 

I will be more careful than ever not to mistake or 
misconstrue your theories. Of course I cannot help 
seeing their delightful absurdity. You see that 
yourself. What? You don't? My dear Wells, in 
a former letter we thoroughly thrashed out that 
question, and we settled that you did see the absurd- 
ity of your whole position. I really cannot allow 
you to reopen the matter. Your absurdity remains 
the one changeless established immovable fact in a 
world of ceaseless change and flux and doubt. 
Believe me, it is the very pivot of your entire system 
of social and political philosophy. 

Having shown you how fettered and restricted I 
am compared with yourself, inasmuch as I feel bound 
to consider carefully every statement I make, we 
may now settle down to the examination of your 
reply to Mr. Churchill. Draw up your chair to the 
table, and spread out your copy before you. We 
may as well make ourselves quite comfortable, as, 
though our task will, I trust, be both pleasant and 
profitable to us both, it will necessarily be rather 
lengthy and complicated. 

Of course Archibald Spofforth must needs intrude, 
and seat himself in the easy armchair by the fireplace 
with his insufferable air of insolent cynicism and 
brutal contempt for yourself. He is evidently 



134 My Dear Wells 

determined to spoil our conference if you give him 
a chance. We won't take any notice of Spofforth. 
If he interferes or makes any objectionable remarks, 
I'll find some means of silencing him. 

Now if you are quite ready — 'Tenshun, my dear 
Wells. 

You call your reply to Mr. Churchill "The Anti- 
Bolshevik Mind." This title conveys an insinua- 
tion that Anti-Bolsheviks are a small narrow unrea- 
sonable sect who are blindly and stupidly prejudiced 
against being robbed and decimated and devastated 
by such men as Lenin. You begin, "When first I 
read our 'Mr. Churchill 1 's reply . . . I was inclined 
to leave him unanswered." 

I've just heard Spofforth mutter, "Don't you wish 
you had!" And perhaps you would have been wise 
not to attempt any answer. For as you truthfully 
say, " 'Reply' there was none." Nor as a matter of 
fact did you make any reply to Mr. Churchill, except 
in 17 doubtful lines out of 537 — "My poor observa- 
tions" — You may well call your observations u poor." 
Your descriptions of what you actually saw were 
vivid enough, but your "observations," your remarks 
and comments upon what you saw — O my dear 
Wells! 

"My poor observations were ignored" Not at 
all. Bring me any man who can think for himself 
and who will affirm that within the limits of his one 
paper Mr. Churchill ignored any of the main ques- 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 135 

tions at issue. "Mr. Chupchill has not even noted 
that I do not ascribe the present condition of Russia 
to the blockade." Not in so many words. But 
throughout your five papers you imply that the 
blockade is a most potent cause of Russia's present 
desperate condition. Why you even bring your 
"dunnow-wheere-'e-are" sailorman as evidence to 
support you. — "Instead of a reply y there were vehe- 
ment assertions about Russia and about the world 
generally" — That's what you say. You talk, my 
dear Wells! You talk! You talk! 

Have you ever noticed that you have a habit of 
making assertions without bringing any jot of evi- 
dence in support of them? For instance you say 
that these open letters of mine to you are "mud- 
dled." That doesn't make them muddled, does it? 
You have been able to find only one misplaced 
adjective in them. How it would please me if I 
could say that you are a clear, logical, precise, pene- 
trating, candid thinker and social philosopher! It 
would make my heart leap with joy. Of course I 
could say it. But that wouldn't make you one, would 
it? You would still remain a slave to your theories, 
and the confused misguided leader of confused mis- 
guided folk. For as Doctor Watts profoundly 
remarks : 

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite 
For God has made them so," 



136 My Dear Wells 

So with yourself. Now your habit of making 
false suggestions, false assumptions and statements 
which you cannot prove, is very prevalent through- 
out this reply of yours to Mr. Churchill. It is a 
thoroughly bad habit, my dear Wells, especially in 
a social philosopher of your pretensions. In spite 
of Doctor Watts' dictum, I will try to cure you of it. 
I've just heard Spofforth growl under his breath, 
"You'd much better not waste any more time upon 
him." I've thrown Spofforth a look of cold disdain 
that I hope will keep him quiet. I cannot think that 
Spofforth wishes to see you reclaimed. I believe he 
is ill-natured enough to hope that you will continue 
to wander in the mazes of your theories, and perish 
an unrepentant enemy of your country. 

Here it will be convenient to us both, if adopting 
your own happy description of my office, I take up 
my duties as foghorn, not forgetting that I am also 
your flapper — in the Laputan sense. 

When you insinuate a false suggestion, I shall give 
out three "Toots" ; gentle toots or tremendous toots, 
according to the mischievousness and magnitude of 
your false suggestion. Toot ! Toot ! Toot ! Like 
that. 

When you make an assumption that you do not 
and cannot prove, and try to impose it upon the 
credulity of your disciples as verified fact, I shall 
give out three warning "Booms"; gentle groaning 
booms, or noisy furious booms, again according to 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 137 

the mischievousrfess and magnitude of your false 
assumption. Boom! Boom! Boom! Like that. 

When you make some glib statement upon your 
own unsupported authority, I shall give out three 
"Hoots"; gentle subdued hoots, or emphatic ter- 
rific hoots, according as your statement is merely 
doubtful or plainly false. Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! 
Like that. 

When you instil and exploit your own theories as 
workable, approved and tested principles of govern- 
ment, I shall make the foghorn howl and howl and 
howl, till it almost cracks itself with wrathful alarm. 
There will be no gentle howls over your theories* 
my dear Wells, but only fearful, prolonged, inces- 
sant, deep mouthed baying, as from a faithful watch- 
dog who proclaims danger to the household under 
his charge. Howl-oo-oo-howl — oo-00-oo-howl-oo- 
howl — 00-oo-howl-oo-oo-oo-oo-howl — ad lib. Like 
that. 

We have now arranged our code of fog signals, 
which I hope you understand. You will be able to 
recognize what kind of mistake you have made, 
according to the different kind of sound which the 
foghorn emits. If you are ready, I'll tune up. 
Toot! Boom! Hoot! Howl! The "damned 
thing," as you call it, seems to be in good working 
order. I'll make it speak. I'll make it trumpet far 
out to sea, and warn the fog-bound, "dunnow- 
wheere-'e-are" mariners, "Beware the dreadful sue- 



138 My Dear Wells 

cubus ! Beware the quicksands of Internationalism ! 
Beware the maelstrom of Bolshevism I" 

Now let us take up the thread of your reply to 
Mr. Churchill. 

" exactly the assertions that Mr. Churchill, 

inattentive to any reality, unteachahle by any expe- 
rience," Toot! Toot! Toot! Boom! Boom! Boom! 
"has been making for the past two years" Accord- 
ing to you, about two years ago Mr. Churchill sud- 
denly became inattentive to any reality, and un- 
reachable by any experience. Alas, my dear Wells, 
have you not been the victim of this same malady 
for much longer than two years, indeed congenitally 
afflicted with it all your life? "It is true there was 
an air of replying" HOOT! HOOT! HOOT! 
My dear Wells, Mr. Churchill did reply to you 
most convincingly. "Although I am an older man 
than Mr. Churchill," — What has that to do with 
the matters in dispute? " — and have spewt most of 
my time watching and thinking about a world — " 
With the sorry result that you seem always to think 
against your own country, and in favour of Interna- 
tional chaos. Would not your time have been more 
usefully spent in your original occupation, quelling 
your impulse to set your employer's shop on fire, 
and since you were taking his money for your ser- 
vices, honestly trying to serve him, even if he were 
a bad employer? There were ameliorations of 
your lot, such as occasionally serving pretty girls 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 139 

with ribbons and finery, and other articles of femi- 
nine adornment. 

u — in a world which he (Mr. Churchill) has been 
rushing vehemently from one excitement to an- 
other" Toot! Toot! Toot! Gentle toots, but 
still unmistakable toots. — "he has the impudence" 
Impudence ! You can easily beat him at that. The 
next time Mr. Churchill shows you any impudence, 
send him a letter in the tone and style of the letters 
you write to me. — "to twit me with superficiality." — 
If he only twits you, my dear Wells, I should let 
him twit. Suppose he begins to study your works 
as I am doing, how then? Be thankful to anyone 
who only twits you. Look at Spofforth seated there 
by the fire, glaring and scowling at you, waiting his 
chance to make a pounce. Spofforth won't twit you. 
— "He (Mr. Churchill) makes the cheap debating 
society point against me — " Would you say that the 
"points" you are here making against Mr. Churchill 
are on quite so high a level as that of a cheap debat- 
ing society? " — that I have written an outline of the 
world's history. — " In this, Mr. Churchill is ill- 
advised and wrong. He should encourage you to 
write, not only complete world histories, but com- 
plete manuals of controversial etiquette, complete 
cookery books, complete anything and everything 
that will keep you off your International whimsies. 
" — as though that convicted me of presumption." 
Never mind what any of us convict you of, my dear 



140 My Dear Wells 

Wells. You "hit back" by calling us all "silly" and 
thus draw your readers away from the matter in 
dispute. "It is as silly as charging a painter with 
presumption for sketching a wide landscape instead 
of painting a bunch of flowers" You talk! You 
talk! As the schoolboys say, "On to the ball!" 
"From a gentleman who has with unshaken confi- 
dence undertaken Admiralty, the guidance of our 
home affairs, and most other great public concerns, 
ifiis ridiculous." TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! My 
dear Wells, you have managed the affairs of whole 
continents — on paper. Mr. Churchill has at least 
had many years of varied experience in the actual 
responsible government of the people. He must 
have learned what you seem never even to suspect, 
that men and women will not change their natural 
instincts and propensities, remodel their conduct and 
forsake their own palpable interests in order to 
establish the theories you have hatched in your head. 
I do wish you would persuade Lenin to give him- 
self a fortnight's holiday while you take a turn at 
the practical government of mankind. 

"But Mr. Churchill makes his point in entire 
honesty." I am always uncertain what you mean 
when you speak of "honesty." There is the new 
kind of honesty which you and Lenin have in- 
vented. In respect of the old and now almost ob- 
solete kind of honesty embodied in the eighth 
commandment, you seem to me to be standing on 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 141 

your head. "He does not think I have any right 
to a view of the world as a whole" TOOT I 
TOOT! TOOT! How can Mr. Churchill stop 
you from taking a view of the world as a whole? 
Why not set to work and do so, instead of taking 
merely distorted topsy-turvy snapshots of it? 
"He believes quite naively that he belongs to a 
peculiarly gifted and privileged class of beings." 
Toot! and Toot! and Toot! again. How do you 
know what Mr. Churchill believes about himself? 
It is plain that you believe "quite naively' ' that you 
are a "peculiarly gifted" social philosopher. At 
least that is the attitude you adopt towards Mr. 
Churchill. I believe that you are — what I am try- 
ing to convey in these letters. Now whether you are 
right or wrong in your estimate of Mr. Churchill, 
I will not here dispute. But let me tell you, in all 
gentleness, very sorrowfully but very firmly, that 
you are quite wrong in your estimate of yourself. 
" — beings to whom the lives and affairs of common 
men are given over, the raw material for brilliant 
careers" Toot ! Toot ! Toot ! Why not call him 
a bloated aristocrat outright? "It seems to him an 
act of insolence — " Toot ! Toot ! Toot 1 " — that a 
common man like myself — " 

Might you not have left this point in doubt, not 
classifying yourself quite so definitely, but allowing 
us some latitude of speculation about it, letting your 
status as it were ooze out from you? There is some 



142 My Dear Wells 

little savour of brag, my dear Wells, in this unblush- 
ing assertion of yourself as a common man. Why 
not let it be guessed at, suspected, surmised, held in 
suspense in our minds, and then at the right moment 
proclaimed by some unmistakable act of yours which 
could allow us no further doubt as to your class ? 

But perhaps you wished to mark a contrast 
between yourself and Mr. Churchill, who you say 
is not only a reckless, ambitious, vehement politician, 
but is also guilty of being connected with the peer- 
age. This in itself goes far to prove that he is 
utterly unfit to hold any place in any government. 
Indeed it is conclusive evidence not only of political 
incapacity, but of moral worthlessness, to many of 
those whom you ard "thinking for.:" And you 
mustn't lose your hold upon them. 

You go on to say that it seems to Mr. Churchill 
an act of insolence that a common man like yourself 
"should form judgements upon matters of states- 
craft r TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! HOOT! 
HOOT! HOOT! So far is Mr. Churchill from 
thinking it an act of insolence that a common man 
like you should form judgments upon matters of 
statescraft, that, in his clearly reasoned paper which 
you are here professing to answer, he praises the 
political system under which common men through- 
out the country have chosen "a lad from a Welsh 
village to be Prime Minister of Great Britain, and 
the leading figure in Europe." I really must give 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 143 

forth another loud and prolonged HOOT! when 
your giant mind monstrously delivers itself of so 
palpably false an assertion. There's a gathering 
look of anger on Spofforth's face. Perhaps you 
had better move your chair a little farther away 
from him. One or two more such statements from 
you, and I may not be able to restrain him from 
doing you an injury. 

" — should venture to dispute the horrible waste of 
human life and hope — our lives and hopes and the 
future of our children." TOOT ! TOOT ! TOOT ! 
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! HOOT! HOOT! 
HOOT! HOWL-OO-HOWL— OO-HOWL! 

I would have thought it impossible to pack into 
the three sentences which I am analyzing, so much 
false insinuation, false suggestion, false assumption 
and false statement as you have contrived to pack 
into their small space. Let us have another look at 
these sentences. 

You say (false statements) that Mr. Churchill 
does not think that you have any right to view the 
world as a whole, and that he considers it an act of 
insolence for a common man to form judgments upon 
matters of statescraft. You insinuate that he does 
this because he is an aristocrat, and is therefore 
naturally and congenitally incapable of regarding 
the "lives and affairs of common men" except "as 
raw material given over to him to make a brilliant 
career." Here you make the false suggestion that 



144 My Dear Wells 

all aristocrats naively regard all common men in this 
light, and you thereby create a class hatred in the 
minds of those whom you are "thinking for." You 
inflame them against all aristocrats, whether indi- 
vidual aristocrats are good or bad citizens, whether 
or not they are working for the welfare of their 
country and the interest of all classes. 

You go on to make the further and darker false 
statement that Mr. Churchill thinks it an act of 
insolence that you should "venture to dispute the 
horrible waste of human life and hope — our lives 
and hopes and the future of our children . . ." In 
these words you make the false suggestion that Mr. 
Churchill, in contrast to yourself, approves of a 
"horrible waste of human life and hope," and is 
actively engaged in sacrificing "our lives and hopes 
and the future of our children" — suggesting this, 
and in the same words, suggesting that you are 
beneficently engaged in withstanding him, and that 
you are protecting "our lives and hopes and the 
future of our children" from his baleful practices 
against them. 

Further, my dear Wells, in the same few short 
words, you make the monstrous assumption that 
"our lives and hopes and the future of our children" 
are to be saved from Mr. Churchill's malignant 
activities by the promulgation of your International 
and Collectivist theories. For I know not that you 
have taken any other, any active practical means to 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 145 

save "our lives and hopes and the future of our 
children," beyond writing papers backing up Lenin, 
and inciting your fellow citizens towards revolution 
and the establishment of an International govern- 
ment. You do not give us the least hint by what 
conceivable process the copious publication of your 
theories will save "our lives and hopes and the 
future of our children." Are you taking any other, 
any practical steps to rescue "our lives and hopes 
and the future of our children?" If you are not 
taking such steps, why do you most irrelevantly, 
with sublimest audacity of self-delusion, with blind- 
est disregard of facts, with no care except for a 
shout of applause from the crowded gallery of your 
unthinking disciples, — why in the name of all that 
is honest in controversy, do you pose as the saviour 
of human lives and hopes and the future of our 
children? 

Before we accept you as a saviour of human hopes 
and lives and the future of children in any part of 
the world, we will ask what are your feelings toward 
the men who have caused the enormous waste of 
human lives and hopes in Russia, who have sentenced 
millions of helpless babes to hunger, marasmus, 
idiocy, disease and untimely death, by governing 
Russia on what you carefully explain to us are false 
and unworkable Marxian theories. Oh but you say, 
these millions of lives were sacrificed in the sacred 
cause of Internationalism. It is true you tell us that 



146 My Dear Wells 

they were sacrificed to a false and vicious theory, but 
what does that matter? It was an International 
theory. Therefore these millions of lives don't 
count as waste with you. You counsel us to make 
haste and save our own lives and hopes and the 
future of our children by supporting Bolshevism, 
and at the same time starting to govern our own 
country on some other International theory which 
you have hatched in your head, and which you 
assume will work, without giving us the least shadow 
of proof that it will not sacrifice as many lives and 
hopes, and destroy as many babes as Bolshevism 
itself. 

So you abuse the men who are governing your own 
country, and you embrace the man whom you have 
called a rotten little incessant egotistical intriguer 
deserving to be killed by some moral sanitary 
authority — you embrace this man who has been 
largely responsible for this multitudinous murder 
and waste of human lives and hopes, you palliate his 
crimes, you extol his "creative effort," you counsel 
the Americans to support him in governing Russia 
by his vicious unworkable principles. And to multi- 
ply and crown your absurdities you pose as a saviour 
of human lives and hopes and the future of our 
children. TOOT! BOOM! HOOT! HOWL! 
Cease not, O foghorn, to send your warning message 
as far as there are men's ears to receive it. 

I have examined at great length these three sen- 



The Foghorn Tunes Up 147 

tences in your reply to Mr. Churchill. I have shown 
what they really amount to, what they signify to men 
who can think for themselves. Upon the minds of 
those who cannot think for themselves, who allow 
you to do their thinking for them, who take what- 
ever you write at its spurious face value, you have 
left the impression that you are not only a profound 
social philosopher with a sovereign panacea for the 
miseries and disorders of the world, but that you 
are also a beneficent philanthropist, protecting our 
lives and hopes and the future of our children from 
a body of wicked aristocrats who are bent upon 
destroying them. You have thus gained great per- 
sonal prestige, and you have fomented that unrea- 
soning class hatred which if it gains its ends will 
bring untold misery to all classes, but chiefly to the 
poorer classes. So it has been in Russia. For it is 
always upon the poorer classes, the working classes, 
that national mistakes are most heavily visited. You 
don't think that class hatred is a national mistake? 
Think again, and think a little more carefully. 

Just one more point, to finish off the sentence. You 
accuse Mr. Churchill of a "frantic anti-Russian pol- 
icy." Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Mr. Churchill's policy 
is not anti-Russian. It is anti-Bolshevist, anti- 
Internationalist, pro-British. Your own policy is 
anti-British, pro-Bolshevist, pro-Internationalist. Yet 
here you imply that you are pro-Russian, in oppo- 
sition to Mr. Churchill, who you say is anti-Russian. 



148 My Dear Wells 

How is it that Pacifists and Internationalists are 
always fervent Patriots in respect of other coun- 
tries, and fervent Internationalists in respect of 
their own country? Find me an answer to this 
riddle. 

Adhesively yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
New York, 
6 February, 1921. 



LETTER TWELVE. 

THE FLAPPER FLAPS AND THE 
FOGHORN HOWLS. 

My Dear Wells, — 

In my last letter I dissected 63 of the 537 lines 
which your reply to Mr. Churchill contains. In 
these first 63 lines there is not one word of argu- 
ment. You have carefully shunned the four ques- 
tions which I showed in my ninth letter (page 
103) were the matters of dispute between you 
and him. You have merely made an attack on 
Mr. Churchill's private and political motives and 
character, and presented him in violent contrast 
to yourself. By adopting these tactics, you have 
established yourself, in the minds of all readers 
who cannot think for themselves, as a profound 
social and political philosopher, a lofty disinter- 
ested philanthropist who is offering a free admis- 
sion to an International paradise to them and to 
millions of their dear sweet little unborn babes. 
In the same unthinking minds, you have established 
Mr. Churchill as a reckless, wicked, bloodthirsty 
aristocrat, consumed with a lust to "waste human 
lives and hopes," and waiting like the great red 
149 



150 My Dear Wells 

dragon in Revelations to devour unborn babes — an 
unscrupulous member of a privileged class of beings 
against whom you, a common man, appeal to the 
other common men of the kingdom, not to let him 
waste their lives and hopes and devour their unborn 
babes. And the common men of the kingdom, not 
wishing to have their lives and hopes wasted and 
their unborn babes devoured by Mr. Churchill, vote 
for your attractive alternative of an International 
Collectivist paradise which will open to them of its 
own accord if they will simply embrace your theories. 

Such are the results of our analysis of the first 
63 lines of your reply. There remain 474 lines for 
us yet to examine. My dear Wells, I hope I have 
convinced you that I do not intend to shirk my duty 
to you. But the last three sentences which we have 
examined have taken up an inordinate amount of our 
available time. Suppose that I had resolved to sub- 
ject all the sentences in your five papers on Russia 
to the same minute and searching analysis indeed 
which they invited. By this time we should scarcely 
have got to the end of the first paper. From this 
you will be able to estimate how lightly and leniently 
I have dealt with you. 

Not that I shrink from the full examination of 
these 474 remaining lines. A mere glance through 
them shows that they will amply repay all the loving 
care and attention that we may bestow them. But 
there are other considerations. You complain that 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 151 

I have not read your other writings. I am eager to 
examine them. I am told that in "God the Ever- 
lasting King" you have said some very remarkable 
things about religion. Of course Spofforth must 
needs ejaculate a jeering laugh. He has read it, 
and he says it is "bunk." Since Norfolk has been in 
the United States, he admits some very questionable 
words into his vocabulary. Granted that "God the 
Everlasting King" is "bunk," Spofforth needn't have 
said so in that offensive monosyllable. He might 
have put it in a kinder, politer way. I shall read it 
myself, and if I find that it is not "bunk," I shall 
handle Spofforth very severely. 

Then Mr. Hilaire Belloc says your "Outline of 
History" is — well, he doesn't say that it is "bunk." 
Perhaps he hasn't heard the word, and perhaps he 
wouldn't use it if he had. But Belloc does say that 
a large part of your "Outline of History" is bad 
history, and quite untrustworthy in many of its facts 
and conclusions. I suppose that, as in social philos- 
ophy, when a common man like yourself sets out to 
write history for common people, his business is to 
ask himself what they would like to believe, and 
then to write his history accordingly. This is what 
Belloc says you have done. He seems to think 
history ought to be written in some other way, and 
this prejudices him against your book. I have an 
uneasy feeling that I ought to look at your "Outline 
of History" — not to read it thoroughly, but just to 



152 My Dear Wells 

skim off any fallacies that may be floating on the 
surface. 

There is another consideration. Not only do my 
obligations to you increase with respect to what you 
have written in the past, but I may be incurring fresh 
obligations with respect to what you are writing 
now, and may write in the future. How do I know 
in what fresh direction you may go woolgathering? 
At any moment you may offer me such a tempting 
fresh exhibition of "modern ideas" for my examina- 
tion that I shall not be able to resist their instant 
discussion with you. I must have a margin of time 
to meet such a contingency. I repeat that in view 
of other responsibilities, three years is the longest 
period that I can set apart to cure you of your 
International whimsies and to make a good loyal 
British citizen of you. To do this thoroughly, it is 
not enough to teach you that burning down employ- 
ers' shops, stealing silver teapots, "collecting" other 
people's property, and fraternizing with the avowed 
enemies of your country with the object of provoking 
a social revolution — it is not enough to teach you 
that these activities cannot form the basis of any 
social order, but can only lead towards universal 
misery, starvation and anarchy. When I have 
taught you this lesson — a very hard one, I admit, 
for you to learn — I shall also have to show you that 
social order of any kind in any state depends almost 
entirely upon a general obedience of all classes to 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 153 

certain ancient changeless rules of private conduct, 
and to certain ancient eternal first principles of 
government. Considering the opposition in your 
mind to these ancient rules and principles, I fear a 
great portion of our three years is already mort- 
gaged. We shall have to economize the precious 
moments we spend over your reply to Mr. Winston 
Churchill, alluring as the subject is. Before we 
resume our inquiry, let us call to mind that its main 
object is to ascertain your capacity to "think for" 
other people, and the quality of the thought that 
you are "thinking" for them. 

'Tenshun, my dear Wells! The foghorn is in 
good working order, and my flapper's rod with its 
bladder attached is by my side. You have kept me 
so busy with the foghorn, that I have scarcely had a 
chance to serve you as flapper — in the Laputan 
sense. I take up my instrument of office, swing it 
over my shoulder, and prepare to give you a resound- 
ing slap with the bladder. For, my dear Wells, 
all through this reply to Mr. Churchill, you are 
so oblivious of the matters you are discussing with 
him, so intent upon proving him to be a villain, 
and upon pushing your own theories, that I must 
try to wake you up to the realities of your situation. 

Please to turn back to Letter Nine, page 103. I 
have there plainly set down the groups of questions 
which form the subject matter of your debate with 
Mr. Churchill. Please to read them over carefully. 



154 My Dear Wells 

I take my aim — Pop! That was a good stroke, 
wasn't it? Did you feel it? Has it roused you? 
Has it purged your vision and shown you what you 
are arguing about? 

My dear Wells, except in two short passages 
amounting to 17 lines, you never approach these 
vital questions which you are pretending to discuss, 
which alone are worth serious discussion, and which 
so urgently demand our most searching inquiry. 

If to save time, I spare you a minute examination 
of the remaining 474 lines, will you take my word 
that they contain as great a proportion of irrele- 
vancies, misrepresentations, fallacies, false insinua- 
tions, false suggestions, unproved and false asser- 
tions, and outrageous assumptions as the 63 lines 
which I have already examined? Or will you insist 
that I shall dissect every remaining sentence with 
the same diligent care that I have given to the last 
three sentences? It is for you to say. Let me hear 
from you on this point. 

Meantime I proceed to review the most flagrant 
and salient delinquencies in the succeeding 474 lines. 
For 21 lines you continue to abuse Mr. Churchill, in 
a succession of mixed metaphors. He is a "running 
sore of waste" ; he has "smeared his vision with 
human blood" (what a shocking contrast to "Lenin, 
beloved"!). At the same time his "display of 
vision" whatever that may mean, is "merely comic" 
He seems to be performing some wonderful optical 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 155 

feats. While smearing his vision with human blood, 
and doing other queer things with his eyes, he "poses 
as a statesman." 

"He does not stand alone." This is rather 
cryptic, and to me very suspicious. Evidently it is 
all part of his wicked design to waste human lives 
and hopes. You may well, in the next line, describe 
his vision as "grotesque and distorted" but you get 
cryptic again when you go on to say that this vision 
"is no more and no less contemptible than some 
misshapen idol — " I cannot follow the equation, but 
the phrase would make a splendid caption in a film 
play. 

My dear Wells, I could feast for a week on this 
metaphor pie of yours if we had the time. 

It seems that this misshapen idol is esteemed by 
some tribe or other "to which we may presently see 
our children sacrificed." Now I get you ! You want 
to raise a bogey, and frighten the common people 
that Mr. Churchill is setting on some savage tribe 
to devour their unborn babes ! Cease ! Cease ! Our 
unborn babes may indeed be sacrificed if your 
International theories prevail. Turn again to 
Russia, and count the millions of babes that have 
been sacrificed to a false International theory. 

In the 41 following lines, you summarize in a 
perverse heavy satirical way, Mr. Churchill's rapid 
survey of European civilization before 19 14. It 
may have been a bad world to live in during those 



156 My Dear Wells 

years, but, my dear Wells, compare it with the state 
of Russia under International government as de- 
scribed in your first two papers! You may claim 
that these 41 lines have some remote connection with 
the questions you are disputing with Mr. Churchill. 
I shall say that they contain no word of argument 
on the matters in debate. They draw your readers 
away from them. So I pick up my flapper's rod, 
and I take my aim. Pop ! Right on the spot again ! 
Attend, my dear Wells, to the serious business 
before us. 

After 15 lines sympathetically and perversely 
describing the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, 
you suddenly illuminate the whole situation by saying 
that the Bolsheviks "at once set about killing people" 
You add, however, "with a freedom that had hitherto 
been reserved for their betters" TOOT ! TOOT ! 
TOOT! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! HOOT! 
HOOT! HOOT! It is a venomous insinuation of 
class hatred. In all ranks, in all armies, officers and 
men have been sacrificed and have sacrificed them- 
selves, not because they wanted to kill, but because 
they had to defend their country, or perish with their 
country. In England we would not recruit the hun- 
dreds of thousands that Lord Roberts implored us 
to recruit. We had to recruit eight millions. 

When you further make a sneering allusion to 
those who died at Gallipoli, a mere handful com- 
pared with the myriads who, directly or indirectly, 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 157 

have perished or shall perish from Bolshevik mis- 
rule, I strike you with the rod of contempt of all 
who can think and judge for themselves, and I set 
hooting and howling at you all the warning voices 
that can save infatuated men from pursuing a delu- 
sion to their own destruction. Gallipoli was a terri- 
ble mistake. So was Balaclava. All wars are full 
of terrible mistakes. You condemn Gallipoli. 
Naturally. It was fought for the defence of your 
country. That makes it a crime in your eyes. You 
palliate and excuse the massacres in Russia. Nat- 
urally. They were committed in furtherance of 
an International Scheme. That justifies them in 
your eyes, and makes them a virtuous necessity. 

Let me show you the difference in the quality of 
these two sacrifices of human life. Gallipoli was 
the largely voluntary offering of her sons by a loyal 
colony to the mother country, and declared the 
affection of that colony to the British Empire, its 
pride in being a part of it. Gallipoli was fought 
by men in arms against armed enemies, according to 
the rules of civilized warfare, with the understand- 
ing, consent and enthusiastic devotion of its victims 
to a cause for which they willingly laid down their 
lives. The Russian massacres were mere butchery 
and murder of helpless innocent folk, many of them 
women and children, driven to brutal indiscriminate 
slaughter. They had no arms; they had no means 
of defence; there was no pretence of trial. They 



158 My Dear Wells 

were simply put to agonizing torture and death by 
their own countrymen in defiance of all law and all 
humanity. 

Now let me show you the difference in the results 
of Gallipoli and the Russian massacres. Gallipoli, 
terrible as was its sacrifice of brave lives, did in some 
measure contribute to the final victory, and by that 
victory, you, my dear Wells, as we must never for- 
get, are now in the peaceful possession of your motor 
car and your cosy dividends — until such times as 
your own International theories are put into practice. 
By the Russian massacres, and their kindred tyran- 
nies, your Russian brother novelists and writers are 
in the pitiable condition you describe in your second 
paper, with no motor cars, no cosy dividends, with 
scarcely food to eat, with scarcely decent clothes to 
cover them. While the Russian workers are the 
dumb driven slaves of bloody exploiters who shoot 
them down if they attempt to strike. Yet you wholly 
condemn Gallipoli, and you complacently condone 
the Russian massacres. O blasphemy of sacred, 
heaven-sent common sense ! ! BOOM ! HOOT ! 
HOWL! 

I keep my hand upon the open valve of the fog- 
horn, and let the "damned thing," as you call it, 
blare out its ceaseless warnings through the thick 
fog of a succeeding column or two of your fallacies, 
assumptions, personal aspersions, inconsistencies and 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 159 

self-contradictions. If I try to pick out the most 
glaring of them, almost every sentence leaps out at 
me and demands precedence of examination. 
However I will choose one or two examples. 

Before I select them, I will take you back to the 
end of your fifth paper on Russia where you sum- 
marize the Bolshevik situation. You tell us there 
that we must intervene on a grand scale with the 
vast resources of Western civilization, that the 
American government must undertake the gigantic 
task of becoming the supporter, the right hand and 
consultant of the Russian government — that is to 
say, America must virtually assume the dictatorship 
of Russia. You threaten us that unless we make 
these colossal, costly, risky experiments, there will be 
a final collapse of civilization in Russia, that this 
collapse will spread eastward and westward, and 
that possibly "all modern civilization may tumble 
in" That is your conclusion. Your formula stated 
in the shortest terms is this : "Bolshevism is a tre- 
mendous, world-threatening thing. We must deal 
with it, or it will overwhelm civilization.'' 

If you read Mr. Churchill's paper, you will find 
that his formula stated in its shortest terms, is 
exactly the same as your own: "Bolshevism is a 
tremendous, world-threatening thing. We must deal 
with it or it will overwhelm civilization." The 
difference between you and Mr. Churchill is in your 



160 My Dear Wells 

proposed methods of dealing with Bolshevism. 
Mr. Churchill says : "We must root it out and crush 
it." You say: "We must nurse it, support it, and 
subsidize it with enormous capital and resources." 
Clearly in your reply to Mr. Churchill, you must 
address yourself to this one point upon which you 
are at variance from him, for on the other two 
points, you are in agreement with him. You see 
that, don't you? 

Now what do you do? From the start, you 
involve and entangle the discussion in irrelevancies ; 
you constantly abuse Mr. Churchill; you instil and 
insinuate your own theories; you carefully avoid 
argument upon this main matter upon which you 
differ from Mr. Churchill, and at great length and 
throughout the paper you try to prove that he is 
wrong upon the matter wherein you agree with him, 
namely that Bolshevism is a tremendous, world- 
threatening thing. In your papers on Russia you 
describe its horrors and terrors, and you make us 
shudder, and you sum up by warning us that "all 
civilization may tumble in." In your reply to Mr. 
Churchill, you seek to prove that Bolshevism is a 
comparatively trifling, amiable, negligible thing. Let 
me give you a few quotations. Don't fidget, my 
dear Wells. There's a dangerous scowl on Spof- 
forth's face, and a dangerous look in his eye. Don't 
irritate him beyond his endurance. 

'Tenshun, my dear Wells! Read your own 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 161 

words. "Why is Mr. Churchill making this tre- 
mendous fuss about Bolshevism?" You ask that?! 
You take away my breath. 

u l have tried to draw the Bolsheviks as tney are f 
creatures like ourselves, each one both bad and good 
. . . Mrs. Sheridan's diary confirms that story of 
entirely human beings up to the hilt" We are not 
concerned here with their private habits and rela- 
tions. We all know that when the enterprising 
burglar is not a-burgling, he loves to lie a-basking in 
the sun, and listen to the brooks a-gurgling. That 
he adores the beauties of nature and is kind to his 
mother, is not to the point. We are dealing with him 
as the man who has broken into our house and stolen 
our best silver teapot. Mr. Churchill, you tell us, 
is a bright and vivid painter in oils. Why not judge 
him from that point of view, and make this pleasing 
accomplishment of his the keynote of his character? 
Why represent him to us as a great red dragon with 
an abnormal appetite for unborn babes, and an 
atrocious habit of smearing his vision with human 
blood, and in this blinking state posing as a states- 
man? Since you would have us judge the Bolshevist 
leaders by their private tastes and habits, why not 
extend the same courteous treatment to Mr. 
Churchill, and judge him by some amiable trait in 
his private character? 

Having lightly sketched the Bolshevist leaders 
for us as ordinary, harmless human beings like our- 



162 My Dear Wells 

selves, you say, "But Mr. Churchill will not have 
that truths It is not a truth, my dear Wells. It is 
a glaring transparent fallacy, the fallacy of asking 
us to judge men in their private relations, when we 
are solely concerned with their public capacities and 
actions. These are the men who have tortured and 
shot down without trial countless thousands of their 
helpless innocent countrymen. That is the indict- 
ment on which we are trying them. 

"He exalts the Bolsheviks. He makes much of 
them. He magnifies them to terrific proportions, 
. . . makes them the leading fact in the whole 
world." Well, what have you done? You warn 
us that if we don't deal with them "all modern 
civilization may tumble in." Isn't that making them 
"the leading fact in the world"? You go on to 
speak of Bolshevism as "this small movement . . . 
which happens to he in control of Russia today." 
When your purpose is to discredit Mr. Churchill, 
you represent Bolshevism as a temporary, negligible 
phenomenon, which he is trying to magnify out of 
all proportion. When your purpose was to frighten 
us into recognizing and supporting Bolshevism, you 
represented it as a formidable firmly-established, 
world-invading force. 

You tell us that Mr. Churchill is too intelligent 
to believe that "this small movement . . . can really 
capture and dominate the world" But my dear 
Wells, you have demonstrated to us that it has 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 163 

already so far captured and dominated the world 
that it threatens the wreck of modern civilization, 
unless we extend a cordial helping hand to its crazy 
bankrupt government. HOOT1 HOOT! HOOT! 

Do you recognize, my dear Wells, that in the 
passages I have quoted, and in kindred passages 
scattered through your reply where you claim that 
Bolshevism is a small insignificant movement, 
scarcely worthy our troubling about in a world 
where your vast vague modern ideas are alone wor- 
thy of consideration — do you recognize that, in all 
these passages, you are seeking to establish that Mr. 
Churchill is perniciously mistaken in a matter upon 
which you are in absolute agreement with him — 
namely that Bolshevism is a tremendous world- 
threatening force? 

I do wish you would not contradict yourself upon 
the most important matters of fact. I cannot but 
think that this habit of yours, like your other habit 
of making the wildest assertions without the least 
foundation, is a very bad habit indeed in a social 
philosopher of your eminence. It grieves and hurts 
me more than I can say. Can't you manage to break 
yourself of it? Of course you may plead that you 
felt yourself unable to tackle Mr. Churchill on the 
matter in which you were at variance from him, 
namely this — that Bolshevism being this world- 
threatening force, is it to be rooted out and crushed, 
or is it to be petted and cherished and supplied with 



164 My Dear Wells 

capital? You may plead that being unable to meet 
Mr. Churchill's arguments on this ground, you had 
to prove to those whom you are "thinking for," that 
he was wrong about something. Even then I do not 
think I should have elected to prove that he was 
wrong in a matter upon which you entirely agree 
with him. 

Why not expose him as a bad painter in oils? 
Your disciples probably know as little about art as 
they know about logic. I haven't seen Mr. Churchill's 
pictures, but I think it possible you might have made 
out a damning case against him as an artist. How- 
ever, your object was to prove him wrong about 
something or about anything, in order to discredit 
him with your disciples. And your disciples not 
demanding any better proof than your bare asser- 
tions, not comparing and not remembering, any more 
than yourself, what you say from week to week, 
accept your statements and retain only a general 
impression that Mr. Churchill is wrong about Bol- 
shevism, and that therefore you must be right. If 
that is your explanation of why you denounce and 
attack Mr. Churchill on a matter in which you are 
in absolute agreement with him, I accept it most 
cordially. There is no other conceivable explana- 
tion. 

And now having glanced at one or two of the 
fallacies and contradictions which multiply them- 
selves in the 165 lines of your paper which you give 



Flapper Flaps — Foghorn Howls 165 

to the detraction of Mr. Churchill, we may allow 
ourselves a little time to breathe before we pass to 
a brief examination of the 149 lines given over to 
the advancement of your own theories. 

I ask you to notice that we have not yet discovered 
a single word of argument on your part touching the 
four questions which cover the serious matters in 
dispute between you and Mr. Churchill. (See 
Letter Nine, page 103.) The funds of our Fabian 
beanfeast are sadly in need of replenishment, if we 
are to have that rollicking day at Hampton Court 
and Windsor which we have promised ourselves. I 
am getting anxious. I beg you to attend to your 
duties as treasurer of our beanfeast. Whatever may 
be the results of this controversy, at least let us get 
one day of sheer careless healthy breezy enjoyment 
out of it. You have disappointed me in so many 
things, my dear Wells. Don't disappoint me in 
this. You accuse me of trading on your "careless 
hospitalities." Let me amply repay you. 
Yours bounteously, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

New York, 

February 11, 1921. 



LETTER THIRTEEN. 
THE TORTOISE AND THE ELEPHANT. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I think we may congratulate ourselves upon the 
progress we are making through the morass — if I 
may swell into metaphor over this wonderful reply 
of yours to Mr. Churchill. You will take it as a 
tribute to yourself if I mix my metaphors, and say 
that the foghorn is working admirably under the 
severe strain to which it has been put. You will 
notice that I am obliged to keep the "damned thing," 
as you call it, incessantly tooting and booming and 
hooting and howling. 

I fear that as we examine your theories, I shall 
be also called upon to render you frequent services 
as your flapper — in the Laputan sense. I will there- 
fore keep my flapper's rod and bladder in readiness 
at my elbow. Just to arouse your attention, I will 
give you a preliminary tap. Pop ! What a marks- 
man I am ! 

Now about these theories of yours. Spofforth 
seems to be less actively malignant and has dropped 

166 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 167 

back in his chair. I suspect that this is a ruse. We 
will credit Spofforth with constant vigilance. 

'Tenshun to these theories of yours. Subject to 
your correction, I claim that you instil and exploit 
them in 149 lines, as against 17 lines that you set 
apart for argument with Mr. Churchill. 

You will remember that at some period of the 
world's history, a philosopher whose grasp of cosmic 
laws and principles was scarcely less comprehensive 
than your own, evolved the theory that the world 
rested upon the back of an elephant, whose feet were 
firmly planted upon the back of a tortoise. By this 
arrangement our planet was kept in a steady poise, 
and mundane affairs proceeded in a stable working 
equilibrium. In those days, as in our own, the great 
majority of the people found it too great an exertion 
to think for themselves, and so allowed other people 
to think for them. The theory of the elephant and 
the tortoise seemed to offer a simple and reasonable 
explanation of the universe as they saw it. They 
therefore accepted it without further inquiry as to 
what supported the tortoise. The tortoise remained 
as the ultimate foundation of all things, firmly squat- 
ting upon nothingness in the void. 

I wish to point out to you, my dear Wells, the 
striking resemblance that your own general social 
and political theory has to that of the ancient 
philosopher. In its main conception, it has the same 



168 My Dear Wells 

massive simplicity. It renders an easy, intelligible 
explanation of the concatenation of things. It is 
equally satisfying and convincing to people who 
cannot think for themselves. Indeed, all these 
worlds of "modern ideas," yours, Lenin's, and the 
dozen other paradises of Socialistic and Interna- 
tional felicity, are built upon the self-same simple 
plan of the tortoise, the elephant, and the vast 
superincumbent Paradise on the top. 

I have but one question to ask about any theory — 
will it work in the actual world in which we live ? I 
read in this morning's New York paper, that the 
Socialist legislators of North Dakota have, like 
Lenin, brought their state to bankruptcy, and like 
Lenin, are obliged to apply to the hated Capitalist to 
get them out of the mess. Strange that every attempt 
to establish Socialism, whether in small communities 
of a few families, or in a state of the size of Dakota, 
or in one of vast continental proportions like Russia 
— strange that they all end in bankruptcy, misery 
and confusion, while the community gradually re- 
turns to security and prosperity according as the 
modes and codes of ordinary commercial intercourse 
are again brought into operation. How do you 
account for this? 

Let us take a look at the general plan on which 
all these Socialist Paradises are constructed in the 
minds of their designers. You have exposed the 
crudely false Marxian foundations upon which Lenin 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 169 

tried to get his Paradise to work. But, my dear 
Wells, you are seeking to build your Collectivist 
Paradise upon the same simple vicious formula. 

First of all you posit your tortoise — a body of 
Collectivist principles and doctrines. You do not 
posit it on the bedrock of human nature, which you 
may be sure will in the future act in the mass, from 
the same general motives and instincts that have 
guided human conduct and actions in all the past. 
You posit your tortoise in an aery void in your 
"world of modern ideas." However, the tortoise 
is an amiable placid beast, who lies quiet and acqui- 
escent, while you plant upon his thick impenetrable 
shell an elephant of enormous bulk and proportions. 
The elephant, as you readily discern, is your vast 
new bureaucracy, an enormous and ever-increasing 
number of officials, whose business it will be to look 
after other people's business, and to administer your 
new departments and new institutions according to 
Collectivist principles and laws, irrespective of 
whether the mass of the population will be obliging 
enough to change their instincts and motives and 
conform to your ordinances. This is a matter that 
does not trouble you in the least, for you complacent- 
ly proceed to put your new and regenerated world 
on the top of the elephant's back. 

You will perceive, my dear Wells, that the success 
of your scheme depends upon the behaviour of the 
elephant. You assume that the elephant is going to 



170 My Dear Wells 

do what you wish him to do, stand patiently there 
without wriggling, and bear your new world upon 
his broad back while its inhabitants dance round it 
in pure unclouded Collectivist content and felicity. 

It all depends upon the elephant. But the elephant 
cannot be depended upon. Docile as he generally is, 
he has his seasons of "must" and friskiness when 
even his keeper dares not go near him. And to 
suppose that just to oblige you he is going to stand 
there immovably and never so much as wriggle, or 
jolt, or caper about — My dear Wells, O my dear 
Wells ! Do study the elephant's habits and nature, 
do study the habits and nature of bureaucracy, before 
you put your new world upon your elephant's back. 
Lenin's Marxian -elephant has kicked his Paradise 
to pieces. Why should you think that your Collec- 
tivist elephant will be any more tractable ? 

Once more to our examination of these 149 lines 
in your reply to Mr. Churchill, where you insinuate 
and exploit these theories of yours. Just to keep us 
en rapport with each other, I will give you a swinge- 
ing smack with my flapper's rod and bladder, in- 
timating that it is necessary I should have your un- 
divided attention, pop ! Rather a staggering re- 
minder, eh? But my dear Wells, you are so steeped 
and lost in your theories that a hard tap was neces- 
sary. Trust me, I won't use any more violence with 
you than is necessary to wake you up to actualities. 

You reproach and abuse Mr. Churchill through- 



The Tortoise and the Elephant? 171 

out your letter for being concerned with Bolshevism, 
instead of being concerned with the advancement of 
your Collectivist theories and schemes. In total 
oblivion of the fact that your have described Bol- 
shevism as a terror that threatens to overwhelm 
civilization, you now treat it as something quite 
negligible and harmless. All that we have to do is 
to allow it to subside, and to be absorbed in that 
general beneficent Collectivist movement of all man- 
kind which you are directing from your study. 

Now the first thing that I would have you notice 
about your theories and schemes is that they are 
very vast and very vague. You condemn our present 
civilization as being no civilization at all. "For 
were it so, it would surely have inherent in it a wider 
and finer future." How do you know that it hasn't 
a wider and finer future? Always remember, my 
dear Wells, that this deplorable present civilization 
does provide you with a motor car and cosy divi- 
dends. You will be lucky.if you get these advantages 
in your Collectivist State. In your opinion our present 
civilization has not inherent in it some general 
blessed condition of humanity which you call a 
"wider and finer future." You would replace it by 
Collectivism, about which we must take your word, 
that it will give us this general blessed condition of 
humanity which you do not more definitely describe 
to us than that it will be "a wider and finer future." 
I daresay you could give, I daresay you have given, 



172 My Dear Wells 

as circumstantial a picture of the glories of this 
" wider and finer future" as a Salvation Army cap- 
tain could give us of the glories of the New Jerusa- 
lem — and as convincing. 

You proceed to say that if our present civilization 
were worth preserving, "it would involve developing 
forces of education" — (A terribly nebulous phrase) 
— Here your argument is that because in your opin- 
ion our present civilization does not "involve" this 
very obscure process, it must be destroyed and re- 
placed by Collectivism. My dear Wells, I suppose 
that in your giant mind you do attach some meaning 
to words. In merciful consideration for our be- 
wilderment, I beg you to tell us exactly what you 
mean by "involve developing forces of education." 
You must have formed some more or less definite 
conception of this process in prospective working, 
related, as it inevitably must be, to all other social 
and industrial activities, and administered, as it 
must be, by a vast army of officials. 

We must have some better warrant for destroy- 
ing our present social order than your vague accusa- 
tion that it doesn't "involve developing forces of 
education." Already, my dear Wells, we are "de- 
veloping forces of education" in Whitehall that 
threaten to cost us a hundred millions a year, with 
the result that our working class girls are asked 
questions about Miss Marie Gorelli, and that the 85 
per cent of our population who have to get their 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 173 

living by manual labour are being educated away 
from it, and increasingly hate and avoid it. God 
forbid that we should develop any more "forces of 
education" to work towards these ends. 

At the end of your sentence you climb to yet 
dizzier heights of vasty vagueness. You level the 
further terrible accusation against the civilization 
that provides you with a motor car and cosy divi- 
dends, that it does not "involve developing . . . a 
power of resistance against error and passion." 
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! HOWL! HOWL! 
HOWL! 

I doat to ecstasy upon this last phrase. It is 
worthy of the great phrase-monger himself. You 
have lately* been studying the various successive 
civilizations. Have any of these civilizations "de- 
veloped a power of resistance to error and passion" ? 
If so, which of them? Against what human errors 
and passions? And to what an extent? How do you 
gauge this power of resistance in any particular 
civilization? Are you quite sure that, when you 
have overturned our present civilization, your Col- 
lectivist civilization will develop this very abstract, 
very intangible "power of resistance to error and 
passion" in any greater degree than our present 
civilization, or than the civilizations that have 
perished? 

All these questions you should have asked yourself 
and answered, before reproaching and abusing Mr. 



174 My Dear Wells 

Churchill because he upholds a form of civilization 
which, whatever its defects, has at least the very 
definite, very concrete, very substantial, and precisely 
appraisable merit of providing you, as I think I 
have said before, with a motor car and cosy divi- 
dends. 

Remember, O remember, my dear Wells, that 
your Collectivist State will have to be administered, 
not in your study, but in the world at large by actual 
men and women, who will be cussedly liable to error 
and passion — administered by them for their fellow 
men and women who will also be cussedly liable to 
error and passion. Perhaps you haven't estimated 
this liability to error and passion in men and women. 
At any rate you seem to have planned your Collec- 
tivist State on the assumption that its happy populace 
will not only be free from error and passion, but 
also from the base and vicious habit of looking 
after their own individual interests. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! 

I take a moment's pause to bid you observe that 
I am not here concerned to defend our present civil- 
ization. My primary object for the time being, is 
to examine the quality and consistency of your 
thinking, and to measure your capacity to "think 
for" other people on the gravest questions — in short 
I repeat I am constructing a Wellsometer. 

In the same strain, with the same sublime vasty 
vagueness, you go on to deny that our present social 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 175 

order is a civilization at all, or it would be capable 
of "sane adjustments against war and a proper 
economy of its resources and energy" Toot! 
Toot! Toot! Tout a fait all Toot! And Boom! 
Boom! Boom! Here you are in the same misty 
region of abstractions and imponderable generali- 
ties, vending pills to cure earthquakes. You talk, 
my dear Wells, you talk, you talk! As the Amer- 
icans say, "Come down to brass tacks." 

I have analyzed but one passage out of the many 
in which you push your Collectivist theories, ideals, 
and plans. At your request, and for your further 
enlightenment I am ready to analyze all the other 
similar passages. But I think I have amply shown 
that you are wandering among vast and vague ab- 
stractions which you would find it impossible to bring 
into any practical connection with actualities, and 
with the masses of mankind as we know them. 

Let me note that all this time we have not dis- 
covered one line of argument upon the matters that 
you are pretending to discuss with Mr. Churchill. 

The second thing that I wish you to notice about 
your theories and schemes, is that, granted they are 
feasible, they will be terribly expensive — so ex- 
pensive that they will infallibly ruin any community 
that attempts to put them into practice. As I do 
not believe that your schemes are workable, I needn't 
trouble myself about the expense of working them. 
But if, after the publication of these letters, you 



176 My Dear Wells 

still intend to advocate the establishment of a Col- 
lectivist State, I think you should draw out some 
sort of a balance sheet of its probable assets on the 
one side, and its actual working expenses and lia- 
bilities on the other side. 

I beseech you to go very carefully into this matter 
of Collectivist finance, my dear Wells. I foresee 
very great difficulties ahead of you. All the more, 
as I suppose that whatever commercial transactions 
and intercourse are permitted in your Collectivist 
State, will be regulated by the new kind of honesty 
which you and Lenin have invented, and not by the 
old kind of honesty as set forth in the eighth com- 
mandment. I tell you frankly, my dear Wells, I 
have very grave doubts about this new kind of 
honesty. However, it seems to be gaining general 
acceptance as the honesty of the future. For myself, 
I much prefer the old kind. 

Now it seems to me that the practice of this new 
kind of honesty in your Collectivist State, will be a 
terrible burden and embarrassment to its finances. 
I do not envy your Chancellor of the Exchequer. If 
I were you, I would not say one further word in 
favour of the establishment of Collectivism, till I 
had carefully worked out a scheme of finance suitable 
to the requirements of your future State. Take care 
you manage to leave a balance on the right side. 
Consider how annoying it will be to you if, just at 
the moment you have got things nicely started, you 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 177 

find yourself obliged, like Lenin, and like the Social- 
ists of North Dakota, to apply to some body of 
hated Capitalists to come with a little ready cash and 
help you out of the mess. No, no, my dear Wells, 
you mustn't risk a fiasco of that kind. It must be 
the crowning glory of your career to establish a Col- 
lectivist State on a sound financial basis. 

I know there are enormous difficulties. It isn't 
merely that men are liable to "error and passion" 
and will follow their own selfish interests. There 
are the women. For instance, when Comrade Bela 
Kun was governing in Buda-Pesth, Mrs. Bela Kun 
went to Vienna and bought all the latest Parisian 
evening dresses, paying enormous sums — eighty 
pounds for one hat. I hear a similar story about 
the wife of a leading German Socialist. I dare say 
that you know wives of English Socialists and Collec- 
tivists who are so actively opposed to their husbands' 
pet theories and principles that they take every op- 
portunity of dressing much better than their neigh- 
bours. Even if we get all the men to fall in with 
our Collectivist plans, how shall we abolish all this 
rivalry of extravagance in the women? How shall 
we get all the pretty women to renounce the addi- 
tional charms which the latest most expensive 
fashions may give them, and how shall we get all 
the plain women to rest content, without trying to 
cover and obliterate their plainness under factitious 
costly adornment? 



178 My Dear Wells 

This is a most serious question, my dear Wells. 
I hope you will be able to find a solution. We can't 
have our youngling Collectivist Commonwealth per- 
vaded by Mrs. Bela Kuns, can we? How are you 
going to prevent it? 

In this marvellous reply of yours to Mr. Churchill, 
you advocate radical universal changes which, if 
carried out, will dislocate the world's present fiscal 
system, and from the outset will demand a colossal 
expenditure by your Collectivist officials. Where's 
the money to come from, my dear Wells? Not only 
is your giant mind clouded with a vasty vagueness 
as to how your theories are to be worked by actual 
men and women, but it is steeped in a yet denser and 
vastier vagueness as to how they are to be paid for. 

Come now, sit down with a sufficient supply of 
pens, ink and paper and make out the first year's 
budget of your Collectivist Commonwealth. Put 
all your expenses on one side. Don't forget any of 
the items. On the other side, set down all your 
assets. By the way, what are your assets? From 
what sources, out of whose pockets do they come? 
Well, whatever your assets may be, set them down in 
a nice clear clerkly hand, and then strike the balance. 
It would be a thousand pities if our hopeful Col- 
lectivist State collapsed at the start, and all for want 
of a little ready cash. 

What? You don't propose to start business on 
a cash basis? You propose to open this universal 



The Tortoise and the Elephant 179 

Collectivist shop and supply everybody with every- 
thing they need, on the sole security that mankind 
generally are going to forsake their own palpable 
individual interests, and do all that your vasty vague- 
ness has mapped out for them to do? My dear 
Wells, you'll shut up your Collectivist shop within 
a week. A week? I'll bet you a complete set of 
all your writings on Social Philosophy to a three- 
penny bit, that you'll never get open at all. 

You have planted your tortoise in the void, and 
your elephant will kick your Collectivist Paradise to 
bits, the moment you put it upon his back. It is all 
in the void, my dear Wells. It is all on paper. It 
is something that has got into your head, and all the 
time Nature has got something quite different in her 
head. Don't you catch her smile of grave contempt, 
as she watches you hatching these vasty vague 
theories of yours, and saddling your new world on 
to your elephant's back? Let us have some further 
talk about these theories in my next letter. With 
incessant care for you, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

P. S. — Have you read that little pamphlet I sent 
you, "The Folly of Having Opinions"? 
New York, 
February 18, 1921. 



LETTER FOURTEEN. 

FALLACIES GALORE. 

My Dear Wells, — 

The more I study this reply of yours to Mr. 
Churchill, the more I am fascinated and absorbed 
by it. It is so nebulous in phrase, so opulent in 
fallacy, so triumphant in assumption, so brazen in 
self-contradiction, so cocksure in wild unproved as- 
sertion. Bear with me while I analyze a few more 
of its sentences, if not for your correction, at least 
for my own pastime. 

. From a score of kindred passages I pick the fol- 
lowing : 

"But does Mr. Churchill really believe that the 
men who created all this vision of hope" (curious 
occupation, "creating visions of hope." I cannot 
quite follow the process), "the patient men of 
science, the inventors and writers and teachers, did 
it all for private gain, or for the aggrandisement 
of a family f 

Some of them did; some of them did not. Some 
of them succeeded in getting much private gain, and 
in founding families ; some of them did not. Prob- 
ably most of them worked, as most of us work, from 
1 80 



Fallacies Galore 181 

the honourable motives of getting private gain, and 
also of getting fame and influence. Shakespeare 
made a comfortable fortune out of popular play- 
writing. As Goethe says, "Shakespeare and Moliere 
wanted above all things to make money out of their 
theatres." Tennyson made money and founded a 
peerage. Even you, I suppose, were not averse 
from taking a cheque for your papers on "Russia 
in the Shadows." I hope you got as much for them 
as they were worth. 

Many other instances will occur to you of men of 
letters, artists, scientists, statesmen, soldiers, in- 
ventors, and other men of genius who have been 
tolerably well rewarded both in cash and fame, some 
of them abundantly. Whatever may be a fair mar- 
ket price for "creating visions of hope" for the 
British public, you wouldn't say that you have been 
underpaid, either in cash or fame, for such "visions 
of hope" as you have "created." I am inclined to 
think, my dear Wells, that you rather overdo it. 
You "create" rather too many of these "visions of 
hope." However, there is a great 'demand for them, 
and you know your public and your market. 

Certainly, the majority of the supreme poets, 
artists, musicians, inventors, philosophers, and 
scientists, have not worked mainly with the object 
of providing themselves with motor cars and cosy 
dividends. They have generally worked for a re- 
ward of another sort, the reward that does not 



182 My Dear Wells 

"grow on mortal soil, 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 

For the most part, the supreme creative benefac- 
tors of mankind have obtained this reward, the re- 
ward that they coveted and worked for ; not always 
in exact proportion to their merits, but on the whole 
with some rough approach to fairness. In our im- 
perfect world, we must own that genius, merit, hon- 
esty, and hard work are not always rewarded exactly 
in their degree. You'll take care, won't you, that in 
your Collectivist State, everybody gets his exact 
reward out of your inexhaustible treasury? 

My dear Wells, your argument in this sentence 
is this: "Because many men of genius and great 
creative benefactors of humanity have not received 
those rewards in money and those titles which they 
did not covet or seek, and because a few of them 
have perished miserably before their other great 
reward of imperishable fame was bestowed upon 
them by universal acclaim, therefore let us destroy 
our present civilization, burn down our employers' 
shops, and institute a new civilization where every- 
body shall be rewarded exactly according to his 
services and merits." 

Presumably you will take care that these great 
creative benefactors of humanity shall receive the 
lion's share of whatever may be going about in the 
way of hard cash and titles in your Collectivist State. 



Fallacies Galore 183 

If you do not reward them with hard cash and titles 
or honours, how do you propose to reward them? 
What other rewards can you give them? You seem 
to imply that they have been beggarly treated in our 
present social order and therefore you propose to 
destroy it. Clearly if you do not give them an extra 
allowance of hard cash, and honours, then these great 
creative benefactors — the very class whom it is gen- 
erally agreed should be most highly paid and most 
highly honored — will be very much worse off in your 
Collectivist State than in our present bad old civil- 
ization. Whoever else is going to benefit by the 
change, clearly it will not be the great sovereign 
benefactors and teachers of mankind. 

But if you do give these creative benefactors a 
substantially increased reward in hard cash and 
honours in your. Collectivist State, is that not sure to 
provoke envy, discontent and insurrection amongst 
other classes of workers, such as railway men and 
boilermakers? I think before you start your Col- 
lectivist State, you should draw out a proportionate 
scale of pay for every class of worker — so much a 
day for coal miners, so much a day for the star 
heroines of the film, so much a day for Ministers 
of State, so much a day for those who "create visions 
of hope" for the public. Let us have it all clear — 
at any rate on paper — before we begin burning down 
our employers' shops as a practical way of giving our 
Collectivist State a good start and a fair chance. 



184 My Dear Wells 

Draw out your pay sheet in advance, my dear Wells. 
Let me have a look at it before you proceed to en- 
force its acceptance upon the various classes of 
workers. I may be able to give you a useful hint 
or two. 

But you will say that in the succeeding sentence, 
you point out the one great source of evil and cor- 
ruption in our present civilization. You demand of 
Mr. Churchill whether he has the "assurance to tell 
us that the rich men of to-day and the powerful men 
of to-day are anything but the interceptors of the 
wealth and influence that quite other men have cre- 
ated for mankind?" 

Do you mean all, or approximately all, the rich 
men, approximately all the powerful men? If you 
do, then no more monstrously and transparently 
false and absurd suggestion was ever made. 
TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! HOOT! HOOT! 
HOOT ! Open your eyes, my dear Wells. Let me 
give you a resounding thwack with my flapper's rod 
and bladder. POP! Awake! Awake to facts! 
Make a list of the richest, and most powerful 
men in Western European and American civ- 
ilization. Quite a large number of them are 
men who have made themselves rich and pow- 
erful, not by intercepting the wealth and in- 
fluence that other men have created for mankind, 
but by their own conspicuous ability, by severe 
self-denial, by constant strain of thought and hard 



Fallacies Galore 185 

work. By these means they have created vast 
quantities of wealth for others, and have eased 
the conditions of living for large populations of 
workers, and have otherwise conferred lasting bene- 
fits on their fellows. I do not say that some of 
these rich and powerful men may not have received 
larger rewards than were justly their due. I do not 
say that some of them may not have gained some of 
their wealth by dishonest means. There is no pos- 
sible way of adjusting any scale of measurement. The 
thing for you to notice — pop ! — is that in your Col- 
lectivist State you are not likely to have many of 
these benefactors, for in denying them the rewards 
of money, power, honour and influence, you take 
away from them all incentive to train their natural 
ability, to exercise self-denial, to scorn base trivial 
delights, and to spend themselves in constant 
thought and labour. Notice the result in Russia 
of suppressing and persecuting out of existence this 
enterprising type. 

It is true that among these deservedly rich and 
powerful men you will not find many scientists, writ- 
ers, thinkers and artists. These classes do not as a 
rule, work chiefly for the rewards of money and 
power. They covet that other greater and more 
durable reward. But even in the matter of hard 
cash, many of them fare very comfortably. They 
have their motor cars and cosy dividends. 

Again, many of the most powerful men in the 



186 My Dear Wells 

world are by no means rich. They covet the pos- 
session of power and the disposition and government 
of their fellows more than they covet riches. But 
again many of these fare very comfortably. They 
have their motor cars and cosy dividends. 

Let us return to the examination of your challenge 
to Mr. Churchill. "Has he the assurance to tell us 
that the rich men of today and the powerful men of 
today, are anything hut the interceptors of the 
wealth and influence that quite other men have ere- 
ated for mankind" If Mr. Churchill hasn't the 
assurance to tell you that, I have, my dear Wells. 
Your fallacy is that you implicitly assert that all rich 
men and all powerful men today are dishonest "in- 
terceptors" of money and influence that do not be- 
long to them. You do not trouble to ask if there 
are. any exceptions, what probable proportion there 
is of rich and powerful men who are not "dishonest 
interceptors," how the rich and powerful men who 
are not dishonest "interceptors" are to be distin- 
guished from the rich and powerful men who are 
dishonest "interceptors," or whether there is any 
means of distinguishing them. You merely make a 
false general careless sweeping assertion that all 
rich and all powerful men are grabbing the wealth 
and influence that quite other men, whose names you 
do not mention, have "created for mankind." 

By the way, you do not tell us the precise process 
by which these other men have "created influence" 



Fallacies Galore 187 

for mankind generally to use and profit by. I sup- 
pose by the same process that they "created visions 
of hope." Nor do you tell us what kind of "influ- 
ence" it is that these other men have "created." 
Apparently it is a portable influence, for dishonest 
rich and powerful men have grabbed it. Apparently 
also it was "created" in large quantities, for small 
quantities of influence would not be worth stealing 
by rich and powerful men. Whether this influence 
was created in lumps or in a fluid state, where it was 
stored when the rich and powerful men grabbed it, 
where they have stored it now, whether in bottles or 
in tins or in cardboard boxes, and what conceivable 
use any man, however rich and powerful and dis- 
honest, can make of this stolen influence when he has 
got it — all these interesting particulars you withhold 
from us, my dear Wells. You merely bring a loose 
general accusation against all rich and all powerful 
men of grabbing vast quantities of influence which 
unspecified persons have "created for mankind." 

A damning accusation truly, but — nebulous, eh? 
In fact a masterpiece of nebulosity and vasty vague- 
ness? What does that matter? Those whom you 
are "thinking for" will not analyze it, cannot 
analyze it. The majority of them wish to believe 
that they have been defrauded by rich powerful dis- 
honest men, who it seems have not only seized their 
wealth, but also have seized all these tons or hogs- 
heads of "influence," which rightly belongs to man- 



188 My Dear Wells 

kind generally. And so you establish yourself in 
the minds of your disciples as a philanthropist who 
is determined to prevent their being defrauded. And 
you establish Mr. Churchill in their minds as a 
greedy adventurer who is determined to defraud 
them. You build a series of loose general conclu- 
sions upon this foundation fallacy. You go on for 
half a column at the very summit of vasty vagueness 
in a mist of abstractions, railing at Mr. Churchill, 
and opening up vistas of the new modern world civili- 
zation which is to work so comfortably and so benef- 
icently for all mankind when Collectivism has swept 
all acquisitive adventurers from the face of the 
earth. 

Upon the monstrous transparent fallacy that all 
rich and all powerful men are dishonestly grabbing 1 
what does not belong to them, you pile the monstrous 
assumption that all private enterprise snatches away 
from the workers what they have created. BOOM ! 
BOOM ! BOOM ! Because a few scientists, artists, 
poets, thinkers, and other inspired benefactors of 
humanity, have worked without the object of gain- 
ing a monetary reward, you assume that everybody 
ought to work, and can be persuaded to work, in the 
same spirit ; that in your Collectivist State everybody 
will as a matter of fact work in the same spirit, with 
the same lofty disregard of their personal interests, 
and from the sole motive of securing the diffused and 
general good of the Collectivist Community. 



Fallacies Galore 189 

BOOM! BOOM BOOM! 

And all the time you carefully avoid a single word 
of argument with Mr. Churchill upon the matters 
which are actually in dispute between you and him. 
O my most nugatory Wells ! My most divaricatory, 
most divagatory Wells, whither will you wander 
next? 

Let us look very searchingly into this reprehen- 
sible habit which, without distinction, you ascribe 
to all rich and all powerful men — that of grabbing 
wealth and influence that do not belong to them. 
You call it "intercepting." 

We are about to grapple with a most difficult and 
infinitely complex question. I shall need your 
strictest, minutest attention. As your faithful flap- 
per — in the Laputan sense — I will give you three 
rousing taps. 

pop ! pop ! pop ! 

Awake ! Awake to facts ! It is this pachyderma- 
tous invulnerability of yours to facts, my dear Wells, 
— this, this it is that keeps me awake at nights, 
and saddens the landscape for me when I take my 
evening walks. 

Now let us try to do some clear thinking about 
"intercepting" and "interceptors." They are a very 
ancient and hardy race, these whom you call "inter- 
ceptors." They have existed in all past civilizations. 
A very pronounced, aggressive, unscrupulous type 
of "Interceptor" existed in large numbers amongst 



190 My Dear Wells 

God's own chosen people. The old Hebrew 
prophets called them "Oppressors" and fulminated 
against them in majestic language, but so far as we 
can judge, without any practical result, either in 
the reduction of their numbers or the moderation of 
their propensities. Our modern terms are "Middle- 
men," "Exploiters," "Capitalists," "Grabbers," 
"Profiteers." An assault that I made upon Middle- 
men more than thirty years ago, while it has been 
very popular upon the stage, has been as barren in 
practical results as the loftier denunciations of the 
Hebrew prophets. 

"Oppressor" is a good term to use for those men 
whom we can clearly prove to be abusing their posi- 
tion of master, employer, or overseer, to "intercept" 
money or advantages which are due to their servants. 
The difficulty is to prove what is fair and what is 
unfair. Servants and masters make such entirely 
different estimates. 

"Exploit" and "Exploiters" are bad and mislead- 
ing terms to connote the relations of masters to 
servants and employees. The words have been di- 
verted from their legitimate meaning. They are 
viciously used to stir up in all servants a sense of 
grievance, a feeling that to be employed at all is 
necessarily to be taken advantage of by an un- 
scrupulous employer. There is cruel and unjust 
exploiting, and there are cruel and unjust exploiters. 
There is fair and beneficent exploiting, and there 



Fallacies Galore 191 

are fair and beneficent exploiters. It would help us 
to think more clearly on these matters if for a while 
we ceased to talk about exploiters and being ex- 
ploited. Why will we use words to befog ourselves? 
The great majority of men in any State must neces- 
sarily be "exploited," as the great majority of the 
cells in any body must necessarily be "exploited" by 
the brain, and must work in obedience to its direc- 
tions, in order that the organism may fulfil its func- 
tions. The brain must "exploit" the cells. The 
cells cannot "exploit" the brain. Sometimes the 
stomach tries to "exploit" the brain and the other 
cells. This is bad physiological economy. We see 
instances of it in almost every bus, tube, and sub- 
way. 

The workers suffer most from "exploiting" when 
they throw off their legitimate "exploiters," that is, 
their employers, and fall into the hands of theorists 
like yourself and Lenin. Bad and unscrupulous as 
many "exploiters" of English labour have been, 
not one of them has "exploited" his workmen with 
a tithe of the ruthless cruelty and severity of Lenin 
— twelve or fourteen hours a day forced labour, no 
right to strike, and torture or death for disobedience. 

The word "interceptors" which you have used is 
perhaps the best word that we can use in trying to 
unravel this very tangled knot of economics. You 
used it, my dear Wells, in your usual loose confused 
way, without seeking to find its implications, without 



192 My Dear Wells 

putting it into any relation with the universal perma- 
nent instincts, motives and tendencies of human 
nature. 

You used the word "interceptors" to signify those 
who unfairly grab "wealth and influence" which be- 
long to mankind; and you implicitly affirmed that 
all rich and all powerful men without exception, 
without qualification, are guilty of this evil practice. 
If you say that you did not mean to imply that all 
rich and all powerful men, without exception, with- 
out qualification, pursue this evil habit to the detri- 
ment and impoverishment of their fellows, then your 
passages that follow make even worse nonsense than 
if you did imply that this evil habit is possessed by 
all rich and all powerful men without exception, 
without qualification. You challenge Mr. Churchill 
to deny that "the rich men of today and the powerful 
men of today are anything but the interceptors of 
the wealth and influence that other men have created 
for mankind." It is an unqualified statement, and as 
is your custom, you assume it to be proved, and you 
pile up much vasty vagueness on the top of it. 

I am not denying that many rich men and many 
powerful men do abuse their position, do most un- 
fairly and most grievously "intercept" wealth and 
other good things, which, if this were a perfect 
world, would belong, if not to mankind at large, at 
least to more deserving possessors. Let us make 
a searching inquiry into this very prevalent habit of 



Fallacies Galore 193 

intercepting wealth. Let us ask who are the inter- 
ceptors; how many or how few of them there are; 
how they are placed in a position to intercept; what 
kinds of wealth they intercept, and to what an extent 
they intercept it. 

A most useful and obliging term, this "Inter- 
ceptor," my dear Wells. You could not have chosen 
a better word for our purpose, as we shall find, if 
we use it, not carelessly and loosely as you have done, 
but carefully, and discerningly, and with our eyes 
wide open to facts. We will track these interceptors 
to their lairs and hunt them down. We will turn 
them inside out and learn all about them. They 
claim a letter all to themselves. I will therefore 
release you for the time, and bid you prepare for a 
thorough examination of "Interceptors" and "In- 
tercepting" in my next letter. Meantime, sus- 
pensively yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

February 25, 1921. 



LETTER FIFTEEN. 
THE INTERCEPTORS OF WEALTH. 

My Dear Wells,— 

While writing these letters to you, I have many 
times had occasion to fear that your giant mind does 
not mirror any approximately correct image of the 
concatenation of things in the world outside it. 
Especially am I distressed to think that your mental 
retina is obscured with a false representation of the 
interception and the interceptors of wealth. 

Let us settle down to the earnest consideration of 
this important question. Once more, 'Tenshun! — 
POP ! — I like this office of flapper — in the Laputan 
sense. 

Make a vast picture to yourself. Imagine all the 
desirable concrete palpable things there are in the 
world that can be counted as wealth : food, dresses, 
houses, furniture, jewels, motor cars, horses, books, 
wines, toys — everything that any inhabitant of the 
earth may wish to possess and make use of and 
enjoy. The immensely greater part of this wealth, 
nearly all of it, is being constantly consumed, and is 
being constantly reproduced. It is constantly chang- 
ing hands and passing from one inhabitant of the 
194 



The Interceptors of Wealth 195 

earth to some other inhabitant of the earth. It is 
in a state of eternal flux, and quantities of it, large 
or small, huge accumulations of it, or mere bits and 
sweepings of all sorts and sizes, are, under con- 
stantly changing and diverse circumstances, coming 
actually into the possession, or passing within the 
reach, or near the reach, or within the sight, or can 
be figured In the envious imagination, of every in- 
habitant of this earth. I do not mention the soil of 
the earth, or such abstract things as educational ad- 
vantages and social influence. I am ready to prove 
that if they could be brought into the account, they 
would not affect my argument or my conclusions. 
Nor need we, for our present purpose, differen- 
tiate between wealth that is acquired by personal 
exertion, and wealth that is inherited or received by 
gift. It is clear that the State cannot prohibit all 
inheritance of wealth. It is equally clear, and we 
are all agreed, that large accumulations of wealth 
should be heavily taxed upon the death of their 
possessor. The amount of death duties should be 
fixed at the point where it will cause a disadvan- 
tageous or dangerous reaction upon the general 
business activities and enterprises of the community, 
to raise them more highly. And this point will 
always be variable and obscure and disputable. For 
the purposes of our present inquiry, we need not 
here make any distinction between wealth that is 
personally acquired, and wealth that is inherited. 



196 My Dear Wells 

Now my dear Wells, I hope you have formed a 
rough mental picture of all this wealth of various 
kinds, and of these two thousand millions of men 
and women, who are all of them in actual possession, 
or within reach, or out of reach, of some quite small, 
or of some considerable portion, or of some huge 
accumulation of it. It will help us to realize the 
general situation, if we picture to ourselves a huge 
river, a Mississippi, replenished from the frozen 
mountain resources of Nature, in a constantly chang- 
ing stream of wealth of all kinds, fed on both sides 
with innumerable tributaries of all sizes from broad 
streams to the merest trickling rivulets, all of them 
flowing and charged with constantly changing wealth 
of all kinds. All along the banks of all these streams 
from the head of the smallest rivulet to the broad 
flood at the mouth of the great river, are thickly 
crowded the two thousand millions, all the inhabi- 
tants of the earth, jostling each other for the best 
available places on the banks of that stream which 
is most accessible to them, so that they may draw 
from it some portion of the wealth that is floating 
by. Some of the two thousand millions are so badly 
placed that with their utmost exertions they can 
barely scoop out a few cupfuls to meet their neces- 
sities. Others are so advantageously placed that 
they can easily divert thousands of gallons of over- 
flow to fructify their private pleasure gardens. 

The metaphor will hold good if we represent to 



The Interceptors of Wealth 197 

ourselves that the appetites and demands of the two 
thousand millions of strugglers on the banks are so 
great that the stream is always and everywhere in 
danger of running shallow, and in many places of 
being dried up. If the waters at any favoured spot 
run higher than usual and afford the lucky denizens 
a supply larger than their needs, they immediately 
multiply in numbers, and themselves reduce and de- 
feat their own advantages. I hope you realize in 
your mind the large rough picture I have drawn, 
which faithfully represents the attitude of all the 
inhabitants of the earth towards the wealth of all 
sorts that there is upon and within the earth. 

I need your very careful attention here, so I flap 
you — POP ! — Please to notice, my dear Wells, that 
every one of these two thousand millions is an inter- 
ceptor of wealth. For the moment we will not in- 
quire what the fair share of any individual should 
be, or whether any or many of the two thousand 
millions are intercepting more than their fair share 
of the general stream of wealth. To a very small, 
or to a very large amount, fairly or unfairly, every 
inhabitant of the earth is intercepting some portion 
of the available wealth of the earth every hour of 
his life. He appropriates to his own use some de- 
sirable thing or things which would otherwise be 
intercepted and appropriated by somebody else. 

Now turn to your reply to Mr. Churchill. For 
your own purpose, in order that you may build up 



198 My Dear Wells 

a Collectivist State in a vasty vague region in a vasty 
vague future, you imply and take for a proved fact, 
that today all the rich and all the powerful men on 
the earth are dishonestly intercepting wealth and 
influence that other men who worked without any 
reward or thought of reward, "created" at some 
unspecified date or dates for the use and benefit of 
mankind generally. That is what you affirm, or 
affirm to the extent that you make it a sweeping in- 
dictment against all rich and all powerful men and 
arraign them for being thieves, and oppressors, and 
spoilers of mankind, boom! boom! boom! hoot! 
hoot! hoot! howl! howl! howl! 

To begin with, the very great part of the world 
wealth which every one of us, in different degrees, 
and according to the more or less favourable posi- 
tions we occupy, is intercepting and appropriating — 
the very great part of all this wealth is destroyed 
and renewed from day to day, from year to year. 
It doesn't take long to destroy all the wealth there 
is in any country. Lenin told the Russian workers 
that all the rich men and all the powerful men had 
intercepted wealth that belonged to them. Lenin 
advised the workers to intercept it back again. When 
they tried to intercept it back, all the wealth melted 
away. Lenin, with your active sympathy, is now 
trying to intercept more wealth that he may melt it 
away. 

Your major premise that rich and powerful men 



The Interceptors of Wealth 199 

are the only interceptors, is plainly false, my dear 
Wells, and all that you build upon it is vasty vague 
inspissated nonsense. You see that, don't you? 
You don't see it? Well, I must show you. 

pop ! Take notice, my dear Wells, that every 
man, woman and child on the face of the earth is 
an interceptor of wealth every day of his life. The 
poor half paid sweated seamstress, who very ob- 
viously does not intercept her fair share, does yet 
intercept her miserable pittance. She may intercept 
less in a year than a jewelled furcoated courtesan 
may intercept in one evening. Nevertheless they are 
both interceptresses, and take out of the general 
stream of wealth certain things for their own use. 

I have presented an extreme contrast of two 
women, one of whom, by the disadvantage of her 
position on the banks of the stream, is unable to in- 
tercept sufficient for a bare livelihood in return for 
useful service rendered to the community, and the 
other, who by the advantage of her position on the 
bank, is able to intercept a great quantity of wealth 
in return for corrupting and polluting the commu- 
nity. We all allow there are grievous cases of 
plainly unfair interception of wealth. Let us redress 
as many of them as we can. We shall find it 
a difficult and complicated task. Frankly I can- 
not see how even so monstrously unfair an inter- 
ception of wealth as is manifest in the seamstress 
and the courtesan^ can be dealt with by any general 



200 My Dear Wells 

law. How do you propose in your Collectivist 
State to ensure that a pretty young dissolute woman 
shall not intercept more wealth and influence than a 
poor virtuous ugly old one ? Think it over. 

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, there 
is no such easy way of distinguishing between what is 
a fair and what is an unfair interception of wealth. 
This is our first difficulty. I daresay you have 
solved it all in your study. But trot your theories 
out of your study into the actual world, and set them 
to work amongst actual men and women. 

Take yourself for instance. Under the social 
order and British Government which protect you, 
and which you constantly abuse, you have intercepted 
from the general stream of wealth that flowed within 
your reach, many desirable pieces of private prop- 
erty, amongst other things a motor car and cosy 
dividends. Are you quite sure, my dear Wells, that 
you have not intercepted more than your fair share 
of wealth? Are you quite sure that your motor car 
ought not to belong to some more deserving writer — 
myself for instance? I am quite sure that you and 
I should place very different estimates upon the 
amount of wealth that you ought to intercept in 
payment for your social philosophy. 

When you begin to study this large question, my 
dear Wells, you will see that in the very great 
majority of cases there is no possible way of de- 
ciding what is fair and what is unfair interception 



The Interceptors of Wealth 201 

of wealth from the general stream. We make 
alarmingly different estimates of what is a fair inter- 
ception of wealth, according as to whether it is 
an interception by ourselves or by our class, or 
by somebody else or some other class. Your 
estimate in your reply to Mr. Churchill is that all 
interception of wealth and influence by rich and 
powerful men is unfair. If you were living in the 
real world instead of in your world of modern ideas 
and theories, and if you could intercept back again 
from all the rich and powerful men all the wealth 
which according to you they have unfairly inter- 
cepted, you would still find yourself confronted with 
the plaguy question, as to what deserving person 
should next be allowed to intercept it, and in what 
proportions. While you were setting up your 
machinery to solve these two questions, all the 
wealth would melt away, as it has done in Russia, 
and as it will do in your Collectivist State if you 
ever get it started. 

A terribly difficult, complicated question this, my 
dear Wells, as to how we can make a just estimate 
of what amount of wealth any individual one of us . 
should be allowed to intercept, and as to how we 
can stop all the people who are intercepting more 
than their fair quantities! We are all the more 
dismayed when we find that often, even in the 
grossest, most palpable cases of unfair interception, 
we cannot get at the rascals without bringing new 



202 My Dear Wells 

evils upon innocent interceptors, and without in- 
flicting wider injury and injustice than we are seek- 
ing to remedy. 

That was what we discovered when we tried to 
make our war profiteers disgorge their filthy unjust 
plunder. If ever there was a class of unfair inter- 
ceptors who deserved to be brought to account, and 
whom it seemed easy to bring to account, and to 
visit with the utmost punishment and mark with 
lasting infamy, it was these greedy scoundrels— the 
war profiteers. But we found that we couldn't get 
at them. We couldn't sort them out from other 
interceptors of wealth who had perhaps gained much 
from the war, but who had rendered such valuable 
service to the country that it was impossible to deny 
them a large reward. We had to let the profiteers 
escape with their plunder, because no line could be 
drawn between the guilty and innocent interceptors, 
or between fair and unfair intercepting by the same 
interceptor. 

Of course you could have solved the whole matter 
in your study. I was saying to Spofforth only this 
morning: "There is no social problem that Wells 
cannot solve in five minutes — if you only leave him 
alone in his study, and don't raise any objections to 
his way of solving it." 

Once more — POP! — with my flapper's rod and 
bladder. Please observe, my dear Wells, that your 
monstrous assumption that rich men and powerful 



The Interceptors of Wealth 203 

men are the only unfair interceptors of wealth, is 
plainly disproved by facts every day. Recently, 
owing, amongst other causes, to unwise and unfair 
land legislation, and to the determination of our 
Minister of Education to ask our young carpenters 
and bricklayers questions about Cicero, instead of 
teaching them so far as possible to build houses 
for their fellow workers — owing to these and 
other causes, there has been, as you know, a great 
shortage of houses for our working men. There has 
also been a great shortage of houses for the better 
classes. But never mind them. Let us think first 
of the working classes, seeing that they suffer most 
grievously when house accommodation is short. 

Before the war, it was a fair day's work for a 
bricklayer to lay from 1,000 to 1,400 bricks a day. 
Since the war it has often been impossible to get 
many of our bricklayers to lay more than 350 bricks 
a day. Yet they have taken for this quarter day's 
work a full day's wages, reckoned upon the scale 
of a full day's work. Do you or do you not consider 
that such bricklayers are unfair interceptors of 
wealth? You do, or you do not? 

A rich and powerful man has exploited (in the 
best sense of the word) a large slice of land in one 
of our African colonies, and under white supervi- 
sion, has exploited (in the best sense of the word) 
many of the natives, and has set them to work gath- 
ering nuts, from whence is taken the fat for 



204 My Dear Wells 

margarine, thus supplying many of our English 
workers with a cheap and nutritious food. He has 
paid the natives good wages according to their cir- 
cumstances, has made them comfortable according 
to their standards of comfort, and has introduced 
amongst them some rudiments of civilization. By 
these means he has "created" a comparatively large 
amount of wealth for the natives, has cheapened 
food for English workers, and has intercepted a 
considerable amount of wealth for himself. Do 
you consider that in this transaction, he is an unfair 
interceptor of wealth? You do, or you do not? 

Ponder all these things, my dear Wells. Ponder 
also that when you start your Collectivist State, you 
will have to estimate, or to get a bureau of officials 
to estimate, what amount of wealth every individual 
in it is to be allowed to intercept, and what in each 
transaction is a fair interception. Next you will 
have to find some means of enforcing your rates of 
interception, and of punishing unfair interceptors. 
Think it all out carefully before you start your Col- 
lectivist State. You'll need a vast number of giant 
minds like your own to set it going, and a vaster 
number to keep it going. Before it has been run- 
ning a week, it will be apparent to you that our 
present rich interceptors, unfair and unscrupulous 
as many of them are, do on the whole, in this very 
imperfect world of ours, intercept a much smaller 
proportion of the total amount of wealth "created" 



The Interceptors of Wealth 205 

than will be intercepted by the numerous officials 
who will have to be paid in your Collectivist State 
for seeing that nobody intercepts more than his fair 
share. It should also be plain to you that in your 
Collectivist State very little wealth will be "created," 
for you will take away the main incentive for "cre- 
ating" wealth at all. 

Think this out in all its bearings, my dear Wells. 
You have thought it out? Think it all out again. 
Enlighten the whole problem for yourself by re- 
membering that the staple of human conduct and 
character remains much the same, and cannot be sud- 
denly or considerably improved. Graft, backshish, 
bribery, venality, jobbery, baseness, corruption, have 
always infested all the roads and paths of human 
intercourse, and like highwaymen, have sprung upon 
the travellers and called upon them to stand and 
deliver. In all questions of economics you are a 
very simple-minded man led away by your theories, 
but I cannot think you so simple as to believe that 
in your Collectivist State, new forms and practices 
of bribery and graft will not creep in and utterly 
impoverish your Paradise. If you are so simple 
minded as to believe that your Collectivist State will 
not pay a monstrous toll in new forms of bribery and 
graft, I entreat you to acquaint yourself with the ter- 
rible cost, the terrible inefficiency and the gigantic 
blundering of the Socialist legislation that was neces- 
sarily introduced during the war. 



206 My Dear Wells 

'Tenshun ! my dear Wells ! — POP ! — I am about 
to submit to you a rough calculation which I cannot 
prove, and which you cannot disprove. We all 
allow that there is an appalling amount of hideous 
graft and corruption and oppression in our present 
commercial world. Owing to the enormously in- 
creased number and size and cost of certain com- 
mercial enterprises ; owing to the universal publicity 
which today is thrown upon all large transactions, 
movements and events; owing perhaps most of all, 
to the fact that when volumes and millions of money 
are being poured into somebody's pockets, many of 
us are subconsciously uneasy because some part of 
these vast sums cannot be intercepted into our own 
pockets — owing to these causes, we are all much 
more aware of the existence of graft, more alert to 
watch it, more alive to its evil effects, and more 
alarmed at its magnitude. 

But consider the present enormous volume and 
amount of the world's commercial transactions, mul- 
tiplied as they are out of all computation as com- 
pared with the volume and amount of the world's 
commercial transactions a hundred years ago. Next 
consider the more backward countries of today 
where commercial transactions are on a relatively 
small scale, and are conducted by ways and methods 
more nearly approaching the ways and methods of 
a hundred years ago. I think that those who suffi- 
ciently know these backward countries would esti- 



The Interceptors of Wealth 207 

mate, that in other days the old-fashioned forms of 
graft intercepted a larger percentage of the total 
sum of the monetary transactions than the modern 
forms of graft intercept in advanced countries today. 
It is of course impossible to make anything approach- 
ing an exact calculation. But I believe that those 
who are best qualified to make a rough estimate, 
would give it as their opinion, that though there is 
an abominable increase in the total amount of 
abominable graft levied today upon the community, 
it is probably less in proportion to the sum total of 
the monetary transactions than in many former 
periods of history. 

This probability does not absolve us from con- 
stant vigilance and constant war upon all those 
forms of graft and unfair interception of wealth 
that can be clearly discriminated and effectively 
crushed without bringing worse evils upon the com- 
munity. It does warn us to refrain from violently 
pulling down our present social order in the foolish 
hope that we can build up a new social order that 
will give no shelter to graft and unfair interception 
of wealth. 

One thing more, my dear Wells, I entreat you to 
notice. — POP ! — Many of these large accumulations 
of wealth are always melting down; all of them are 
constantly overflowing into the smaller rivulets of 
commercial intercourse, and there dispensing benefits 
to more or less deserving persons. There is a soul 



208 My Dear Wells 

of goodness in things evil. Follow me a little closely 
here. You are personally concerned. 

I suppose none of us has a very soft corner in his 
heart for the meat packers of Chicago. But during 
the war, one firm supplied the English Government 
with meat for our soldiers at a total cost which was 
some millions of pounds less than the English Gove- 
ernment could itself have supplied the meat. Those 
millions of pounds were thus saved to English tax- 
payers, of whom you are one. Therefore your own 
taxes were reduced, not indeed to any considerable 
extent. Still by that operation, and by similar opera- 
tions, your taxes have been a little reduced, and you 
are thereby a little better able to keep a motor car, 
and perhaps to add a little to your cosy dividends. 

There is a concatenation and correlation of all 
these things, my dear Wells, which you do not per- 
ceive. Tilt your mind toward facts. If you cannot 
grasp and embrace them, being, as they are, the 
implacable foes of your theories, yet tilt your mind 
towards them. Conceive it as possible that though 
you may refuse to embrace facts, they may one day 
quite irresistibly embrace you. Turn over all the 
papers that you wrote during the war, and see how 
many facts that you prophesied against have since 
embraced you, and hold you in their grip. There- 
fore, my dear Wells, place yourself in a respectful 
attitude of possible future receptivity towards facts. 

I think I have shown you that you have formed a 



The Interceptors of Wealth 209 

crude and wrong notion of the interception of 
wealth, and of the persons who are intercepting it. 
It is both false and absurd to represent all the rich 
and all the powerful men as the sole interceptors 
of wealth that other people have created for the use 
of mankind generally. You see that, don't you? 

All of us are constant interceptors throughout our 
life ; and all of us at times, either unconsciously and 
inadvertently or consciously and dishonestly, inter- 
cept from the general stream of wealth small or 
large amounts which do not fairly and rightly 
belong to us, or at least which would belong to some 
more deserving person but for our interception. 
The first difficulty is to find out who is the deserving 
person or persons whom we ought to have allowed 
to intercept these sums, standing back ourselves, and 
being thus rendered unable to pay our income tax. 

This difficulty of finding out who are the deserving 
persons who ought to be allowed to intercept the 
sums that are now being unfairly intercepted, and 
what is the proportion which each one of these 
deserving persons should be allowed to intercept, — 
this difficulty increases according to the increase of 
the sums in question. You, my dear Wells, would 
say that the State should intercept all wealth as soon 
as it is created. But then the greater part of it 
melts away, leaving a vast number of interceptors 
and little or nothing to intercept. If any consider- 
able portion of wealth remains after it has been 



210 My Dear Wells 

intercepted by the State, you will still find yourself 
confronted by the same insoluble problem — who 
are the lucky or the deserving persons who are now 
to be allowed to intercept it from the State for their 
own use, and in what proportions? 

Granted, however, that we have found it possible 
to settle how much each individual or class is to 
be allowed to intercept, we are met with the further 
difficulty of providing official machinery to carry out 
our awards. Having provided the machinery, is 
there one ten-thousandth part of a chance that it 
will work for a week? Revolve these things in your 
giant mind, my dear Wells. 

Before advancing the argument a step further, 
I will give myself the welcome relaxation, and you 
the salutary stimulus of an intromissary — POP! — 
I didn't hurt you? I am not putting my full strength 
of arm into these admonitory smacks. I have prom- 
ised to let you off easily. But I notice that your 
cheek seems to be tingling from the repeated visits 
of my flapper's bauble. You might now perhaps 
obey the Scriptural injunction, and turn your other 
cheek to the smiter. 

I would have you notice, my dear Wells, that not 
only is every one of the two thousand millions of the 
inhabitants of the earth an interceptor of wealth, 
but that with comparatively few exceptions, every 
one of them is intercepting as much as he conve- 
niently can. Further, again with comparatively few 



The Interceptors of Wealth 211 

exceptions, none of these two thousand millions, 
however great the quantity of wealth he may be 
intercepting, considers that he is not justified in 
intercepting as much more as comes within his reach. 
Further, again with comparatively few exceptions, 
none of these two thousand millions, however great 
the quantity he is intercepting, considers that he is 
intercepting more than his fair share. Notice also 
that these exceptions are chiefly amongst those whose 
parents and ancestors have intercepted more wealth 
than their descendants have any pressing need to 
appropriate to their own use. 

Yet once again. Every one of these two thou- 
sand millions is himself the judge of how much he 
is entitled to intercept, and he generally fixes this 
amount at something considerably higher than the 
amount he is actually intercepting, and rarely at 
anything less than the utmost amount which he may 
possibly be able to intercept. How many men have 
you met, my dear Wells, who do not intercept all 
that conveniently comes in their way because they 
feel they ought to leave some part of it to be inter- 
cepted by some more deserving person? How many 
men have you met, who being uncomfortably aware 
that they are intercepting more than their fair share 
of wealth, do as a matter of fact refrain from inter- 
cepting that portion of it which they consider they 
cannot justly claim as their due? Would you think 
it wise of them to refrain from intercepting that 



212 My Dear Wells 

portion, on the very doubtful chance that it might be 
intercepted by a more deserving person, and not, as 
would be more likely, by some cunning rascal who is 
already intercepting more than his fair share? 

A very complex matter, this interception of 
wealth, my dear Wells, and very difficult to solve ! 
Except of course when you solve it in your study by 
simply dividing all the interceptors into sheep and 
goats — rich men who are dishonestly intercepting all 
the wealth that belongs to mankind, and poor men 
who are really entitled to intercept it all, but can 
scarcely intercept anything because the rich men 
have already intercepted almost everything. Now 
_POP!— 

I want you to tilt your giant mind towards one 
or two plain facts. If you won't tilt it yourself, let 
me tilt it for you. The first plain fact is this: How- 
ever many of these two thousand millions of inter- 
ceptors of wealth may be aware that they are inter- 
cepting a larger amount of wealth than is their share, 
however many of them may be amiably disposed to 
stand back a bit, and allow unspecified and proble- 
matically more deserving persons to push in and 
intercept that surplus which they are unfairly inter- 
cepting — as a matter of fact, it is impossible for 
the very great majority of these amiable interceptors 
to carry out their good intentions. Further, if they 
could, it would be a quite futile piece of useless 
generosity on their part. 



The Interceptors of Wealth 213 

Imagine to yourself the two thousand millions of 
interceptors, all thickly crowded and jostling each 
other for the best accessible places on the banks of 
our Mississippi, and of all its tributaries up to the 
remote source of the smallest rivulet, where the poor 
seamstress stands trying to dip her cup into the mere 
trickle of wealth that flows by her. We will our- 
selves give her a spoonful or two out of our own 
pail, to relieve her most pressing wants. But we 
cannot give spoonfuls to all the poor seamstresses, 
or our own pail would soon be empty. The poor 
seamstress is but one out of a vast crowd of indi- 
gents. The banks of the tiniest rivulet are as thickly 
peopled with interceptors as the broadest reaches 
of the giant river, more thickly crowded, for the 
poor multiply the fastest. From this fact it follows 
that if by some master-stroke of economic legerde- 
main, we could transport all the poor and put them 
into good positions down the stream, yet in a very 
short time the banks of the rivulets would be as 
crowded as ever with needy interceptors. The gen- 
eral situation would be pretty much the same. 
Charity must needs do her best, must never check 
her warm heart, or her ready hand. But do what 
she will, she can but palliate and alleviate. The 
numbers of the needy and desperate interceptors will 
remain fairly constant. The general situation will 
remain the same. 

Now suppose that a certain number of conscience- 



214 My Dear ^Wells 

stricken interceptors realize that they are intercept- 
ing more than their fair share of the wealth that is 
floating by them. They give up their advantageous 
places on the banks, and allow a number of the less 
scrupulous interceptors behind them to take their 
places. Much about the same quantities and kinds 
of wealth will be intercepted, but on the whole by 
less worthy interceptors, while the more worthy 
unselfish interceptors will find themselves jostled into 
less advantageous positions, some of them being 
pushed along till they reach the impoverished seam- 
stresses. Their generosity will have been quite 
futile. The general situation will remain the same. 

Notice, my dear Wells, that the overwhelming 
majority of the interceptors of wealth, that is to say 
of all the inhabitants of the earth, are wedged in 
positions on the banks of the various streams^ which 
they cannot give up, which they dare not give up 
except at the risk of being pushed into less advan- 
tageous positions, so constant is the struggle against 
them, not merely for advantageous positions, but 
very often for positions which will scarcely give 
them a livelihood. 

It is the universal instinct of self-preservation 
which urges the great majority of these interceptors 
to hold fast to their present positions, and to be 
always seeking for better positions where they can 
intercept more wealth. Search into this matter and 
you will find that in planning your Collectivist State 



The Interceptors of Wealth 215 

you have ignored the constant pressure of this uni- 
versal instinct of self-preservation upon the over- 
whelming majority of the interceptors of wealth. 
It is a fatal defect in your social philosophy that you 
suppose mankind will act in obedience to your theo- 
ries, rather than according to the prompting of their 
dominant instincts. 

Tilt your mind towards this fact, my dear Wells, 
that in any State composed of actual men and women 
as we know them, whatever amount of wealth any 
one of its individual members may be intercepting, 
whether large or small, whether fairly or unfairly, 
the great majority of them will, according to their 
opportunities, continue to intercept as much wealth 
as they conveniently can, and will be always seeking 
for positions where they can intercept more wealth. 
This does not imply that average human nature is 
growing more base and selfish and covetous than it 
has always been. It does imply that the instinct 
of self-preservation urges us all to provide for our- 
selves and our families, to advance ourselves and our 
families, and to leave the widest possible margin of 
safety from poverty and discomfort. And for the 
most of us that margin of safety will never be wide 
enough. 

You will claim that your plan of a Collectivist 
State allows a margin of safety for everybody. The 
Lord enlighten your understanding! Let me show 
you what the establishment of your Collectivist State 



216 My Dear Wells 

means. Continue to picture to yourself the crowded 
two thousand millions of interceptors of wealth", 
jostling in their different positions on the banks of 
the great river and its tributaries, all of them con- 
stantly employed in intercepting the most varied and 
the most unequal quantities of wealth, from the poor 
seamstress to the multi-millionaire. The metaphor 
ic an economical truth in a geographical figure. 
Economically it is exact. 

Notice that the positions of every one of these 
interceptors, — and of the future two thousand mil- 
lions and more of interceptors who will gradually 
take their places, is determined by the configuration 
of the land. There are the great mountains behind 
them where are stored the vast frozen resources of 
Nature, which are drawn upon to form the various 
streams which flow by the crowds of interceptors, 
through the high bare lands where the little rivulets 
begin their course, down by slopes and gradients to 
the more gently sloping fertile plains which slope to 
the broad river mouth. You survey the scene, and 
you say: "Here is a monstrous thing! That one 
man should be allowed to intercept thousands of 
gallons, while another man, more deserving, can only 
intercept a few pints ! I will change all this. I will 
abolish these shameful inequalities. In the future 
nobody shall intercept more than his fair share. 
Stand back from the stream, all you rich intercep- 



The Interceptors of Wealth 217 

tors ! Let all the poor interceptors take your places ! 
Meantime I will send in an army of officials to shovel 
the land perfectly level, and to cut channels of equal 
depth and breadth for the wealth to flow in, so that 
each of you can have equal access to it, and each of 
you can intercept his fair share, and no more." 

The great mass of the impoverished interceptors 
are enthusiastically in favour of your plan. No 
wonder. Every one of them, even the man who is 
fairly comfortable, is convinced that he is not inter- 
cepting his fair share. They immediately try to 
seize the more favoured places of the rich inter- 
ceptors, and there is a tremendous scuffle and con- 
fusion. While the rich and the poor interceptors 
are fighting for the best places, a great volume of 
wealth slips out of the reach of all of them, and is 
irrecoverably lost. Meantime your army of offi- 
cials have set to work to alter the entire configuration 
of the land, to make it perfectly level, and to cut new 
equal channels for the wealth to flow in. They build 
great dams to stop the present resources from flow- 
ing in the present channels, while they cut the new 
equal channels. They soon find that the levelling 
of the land is altogether too gigantic an operation 
for their powers. They have levelled a few yards 
and there are thousands of miles yet to level. The 
dams they have built in order that they may level 
the land, have blocked up the vast resources of 



218 My Dear Wells 

Nature which rest above them, frozen, remote, 
inaccessible. The streams of wealth have ceased to 
flow. There are but a few poor tricklings for any- 
body to intercept. The former poor interceptors 
perish by millions. 

Behold, my dear Wells, the dreadful picture which 
shows you what you set out to do when you begin to 
found your Collectivist State. It is a rough faithful 
picture of what has happened in Russia. Lenin may 
be Marxian. You may be Collectivist. You are 
both trying to level the whole configuration of 
Nature's vast continent by an army of officials. I 
read in this morning's paper ("New York Times," 
March 2, 1921) the latest account of conditions in 
Russia. The sum of her past horrors and miseries 
seems a petty tale compared with the terrible and 
ever progressive famine, suffering, disease and 
misery which wrap the land and all its people in one 
black universal pall. Take two or three items out 
of fifty that daunt and sicken the imagination to 
conceive. 

"Twenty million peasants are starving." — half 
the population of Great Britain. 

"Agriculture is perishing. Labour, power, ma- 
nure, milk for the children — everything is perish- 

ing." 

For a taste of how state officialism works com- 
pared with private enterprise, take the following: 
"Nineteen institutions have to be gone through 



The Interceptors of Wealth 219 

before a small amount of axle grease can be 
obtained." * 

"The Revolts against the Bolshevist power are 
being suppressed with the utmost cruelty." In 
England we pet and coddle our traitors. 

Not very encouraging to a promoter of a Collec- 
tivist State founded upon virtually the same princi- 
ples, eh? It seems to establish the following gen- 
eral principle for the guidance of Socialists, Commu- 
nists and Collectivists : "When private property is 
abolished, and private enterprise forbidden, in lieu 
of a population of unequally prosperous interceptors, 
a state of affairs is rapidly approached where every- 
body is trying to intercept everything, and nothing is 
left for anybody to intercept." 

Whew ! Whew 1 Whew ! I wipe my forehead as I 
announce the end of our discussion upon these inter- 
ceptors of wealth. I think we may claim that our 
time we have spent upon them has been profitably 
employed. You have learned a great deal about 
them, haven't you? You know now that your view 
that all rich men are dishonest interceptors of wealth, 
and that they are the only interceptors of wealth, 
is quite false and absurd. You understand now that 
we are all interceptors of wealth, and that the 
majority of mankind, obeying the universal instinct 

* Yesterday, May-Day, at a big demonstration in Hyde Park, 
London, resolutions were passed "hailing with enthusiasm the suc- 
cess of the Russian Soviet Government." O my brothers, will you 
not learn? 2nd. May, IQ2I. 



220 My Dear Wells 

of self-preservation, do intercept, and will always 
intercept as much as comes in their way. You won't 
again use the words "Interceptors of wealth" in a 
confused vicious sense to stir up class hatred, will 
you? 

Well, I hope you will lay this lesson to heart. 
Don't you feel refreshed and invigorated by these 
letters of mine, my dear Wells? Don't you feel 
that they take you into a clearer atmosphere where 
you get some insight into the universal concatenation 
of things? Don't you feel grateful to me for lifting 
you out of the regions of vasty vagueness where you 
were wandering, and planting your feet on firm 
ground? It cheers me to think that you recognize 
and value my constant labours for your enlighten- 
ment. In a mood of anticipatory gratitude for what 
I may further say to you, await my next letter. 
Pertinaciously yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
March 4, 1921. 



LETTER SIXTEEN. 
ARGUING WITH A TURNIP. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I hope I have convinced you of the reckless con- 
fusion and radical unsoundness of your thinking upon 
economic matters and of the ruinous mischief of your 
Collectivist theories. We will now proceed to test 
the quality of your thinking upon world politics, and 
to dissect your International theories. 

Spofforth has fallen asleep in his armchair. Is he 
really asleep, or is he only shamming? Is he cun- 
ningly waiting in ambush till we moot some more 
than usually outrageous fallacy of yours, with the 
intent of springing out upon you, and putting a per- 
emptory and tragic end to your further emission of 
fallacies? That shall not happen if I can protect 
you, my dear Wells. It is true that some stern 
warning is needed to those Englishmen who always 
think virulently against their own country. But I 
would not have you sent to any sudden and violent 
expiation. I would have you spared and given a 
chance to repent. It is my hope and endeavour to 
make a good British citizen of you. I suppose you 
don't feel inclined to sing a bar or two of the 



222 My Dear Wells 

National Anthem, just to oblige me, and to soften 
Spofforth's heart towards you, if, as I suspect, he is 
really awake under his closed eyes? Come now! — 

Just a bar or two. Pipe up ! "God save our " 

You won't? Then we must settle down to a rigorous 
examination of these International theories of yours. 

As I have said, and as events daily asseverate, 
there is but one question before the civilized world 
today — Patriotism or Internationalism ? Until each 
nation has answered that question within its own 
borders, it cannot quiet down into peace and security, 
but must needs be clashing against its neighbours in 
ever-growing mutual insecurity and torment of un- 
rest. 

We are now about to address ourselves to the 
consideration of the most important matter that has 
engaged us during these conferences. It is necessary 
that I should have the fullest measure of your atten- 
tion, and for your own sake I will take no risks. I 
will therefore ask you please to submit while I buffet 
you with my flapper's bauble till I am reasonably 
sure that you are wide awake, and in a blessed 
state of receptivity towards facts. POP! POP! 
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! Hey! 
Hey! My arm is aching. It's no sinecure, my dear 
Wells, this office of flapper to you — in the Laputan 
sense. 

Now, 'Tenshun! 

Let us turn again to this inexhaustible polypreg- 



Arguing With a Turnip 223 

nant reply of yours to Mr. Winston Churchill. You 
bring innumerable accusations against him and 
against the social order which he represents. You 
pour out these charges against him, dozens of them 
— he has "a dread of a coming sanity, a coming 
supremacy of justice and order throughout the 
world," — and so on in rambling multitudinous inco- 
herency. U A coming supremacy of justice and order 
throughout the world !" That's what we all desire, 
what all of us who are honestly working and honestly 
thinking, are seeking to obtain ! But remember that 
the Kaiser would have assured you that he also 
was fighting to bring about a "coming supremacy of 
justice and order throughout the world." You talk, 
my dear Wells ! You talk ! You talk ! You do not 
frame a clear intelligible indictment. You never 
attempt to define or substantiate any one of these 
vague wholesale charges. You talk! You talk! 
You talk ! You give us no precise indication of how 
a "supremacy of justice and order throughout the 
world" are to be secured, except vaguely by "hard 
constructive work, the discipline and self-abnegation 
that lie before us all." You do not say who is to do 
the hard constructive work, what kind of discipline is 
to be enforced, who is to enforce it, who is to prac- 
tise the self-abnegation. Let us hope it will not be 
the possessors of motor cars and cosy dividends. 
You talk ! You talk, my dear Wells ! O how you 
talk! 



224 My Dear Wells 

However, it seems that Mr. Churchill is obstruct- 
ing and delaying this coming "supremacy of justice 
and order throughout the world" which is to be 
secured by the operation of your theories, and by the 
practice of the new kind of honesty which you and 
Lenin have invented. But owing to Mr. Churchill 
and other wicked obstructors, you say there is a 
prospect before us of u war and war and more war." 
You admit, however, that your own International 
Collectivist Paradise cannot be achieved by peaceful 
means. "Not in a day," you warn us, "not without 
blood and toil and passion is a new order brought 
into the world" You do see there will be some 
fighting. 

In justice to yourself I think I ought to wake 

Spofforth and tell him that you have got another 

glimmering. Spofforth grudges you the smallest 

perception of facts. I am always pointing out to 

Spofforth that, purblind though you may be, and 

\ contumaciously impervious to any fact that contra- 

\ diets your theories, you do get occasional glimmer- 

| ings. You don't follow them and find your way to 

the light, but you do every now and then get these 

stray glimmerings. That's what gives me hope for 

you. 

In any case you tell us that this reign of Interna- 
tionalism, this Collectivist Paradise where there is 
to be a world-wide supremacy of justice and order, 
where men are to be free "from error and passion," 



Arguing With a Turnip 225 

where wicked adventurers like Mr. Churchill are to 
be rigorously excluded, where there is to be a per- 
fect economy of resources, where there are to be 
"sane adjustments" against every possible annoyance 
to anybody, where large delicious omelettes will 
grow on every tree, where the best native oysters 
will multiply in everybody's rain-water tub — you tell 
us, my dear Wells, that this Paradise is not to be 
obtained without our fighting for it. 

I wish you could have managed the affair without 
bloodshed. It would have been such a triumph for 
your theories. It seems such a bad start to begin 
with fighting. If we get into the habit of fighting 
outside our Paradise, how can we be sure we may 
not keep it up when we get inside? And if there is 
to be a fight for this Paradise, how can we be sure 
that your disciples will win? Suppose the enemy 
forces headed by Mr. Churchill should give your 
disciples a licking? Then there wouldn't be any 
Paradise at all. You would merely have sold your 
disciples. By the way, your main charge against our 
present social order is that it leads to war. Yet you 
are going to start your International Paradise by 
a war to obtain it. How you flounder in self-contra- 
dictions ! 

Candidly, my dear Wells, I don't like this prospect 
which you open up to us of fighting for our Collec- 
tivist Paradise. I don't like it at all. However, if 
there is to be fighting, it's as well we should know 



226 My Dear Wells 

it beforehand. How much fighting do you think 
there is likely to be ? I am not disposed to do very 
much myself. For let me tell you, this Collectivist 
Paradise of yours, as you design it, is going to be a 
terribly dull place to live in. I shouldn't wonder 
if its inhabitants get up an occasional fight amongst 
themselves just to relieve its deadly monotonous 
mechanical routine. In any case you promise us 
some fighting. We are not going to have "freedom 
from error and passion" without a bloody pre- 
liminary scuffle to make sure we get it. 

What we are anxious to know, my dear Wells, is 
this: — how much fighting we have got to make up 
our minds for, in order to set up this Collectivist 
Internationalist State of yours? You assure us in 
your vasty vague way that your State is to be 
"capable of sane adjustments against war." Seeing 
that war earthquakes are fearfully destructive, you 
are going to set up this seismological apparatus to 
prevent them. But you tell us that we shall have to 
endure some amount of earthquaking as the neces- 
sary consequences of fixing up your apparatus. How 
much? How much blood is to be shed to set up this 
Internationalist State? You are not prepared to 
say. It is not your business to weigh, and search, 
and consider, and trace consequences. It is your 
business to promulgate theories, to blow rosy bub- 
bles filled with wordy inanities, and set them floating 



Arguing With a Turnip 227 

to the applause and admiration of people who cannot 
think for themselves. 

Let me tilt your mind towards the perception of 
this stark gaunt fact — there is no possibility of set- 
ting up any form of Internationalist Government on 
this earth until mankind have sacrificed themselves 
and wasted themselves wholesale in at least two 
world wars, more widely spread, more cruel, more 
bloody, and more destructive than the world war we 
have just finished. The yellow races and the negro 
races will be protagonists in these future world 
wars. If you wish to detect the germination of j 
future wars, follow closely the proceedings of the f 
League of Nations, a debating society which has 
been established at Geneva for the purpose of indue- f 
ing every nation in the world to meddle in the affairs j 
of every other nation. I do not say that world forces 
which we cannot control, are not driving us towards 
International catastrophes of unimaginable magni- 
tude and duration. But I do say, with the sternest 
conviction, that when you counsel the destruction of 
the present social order, and advocate International 
Government as a means of avoiding war, you are 
making yourself the laughing-stock of the Eternal. 

It is plain from this reply of yours to Mr. 
Churchill that you have never troubled to form any 
definite plan, even on paper, of the series of stu- 
pendous operations by which your new social order 



228 My Dear Wells 

is to be set up, and by which some form of Col- 
lectivist and Internationalist government is to be 
established somewhere. Clearly the destinies of 
millions of mankind would be involved, and vast 
movements of various peoples and races would have 
to be directed and coordinated. You assume their 
perfect amity of cooperation, and obedience to per- 
fectly wise, honest, and unselfish leaders. You 
recognize, my dear Wells, don't you, that whether 
or not these extended and complicated operations 
are successful in establishing your International 
Collectivist State, they will at least be successful 
in breaking up the British Empire. You do recog- 
nize that, don't you? It is what you desire, and 
what you are working for. I propose to show 
you, my dear Wells, that while the breakup of the 
British Empire is possible, and even probable if 
a sufficient number of its citizens embrace your 
theories, — while this is possible, the establishment 
of International government is impossible within 
any period of time that it is worth while for us 
to attempt to measure. 

I will now lay down a series of propositions, state- 
ments, and conclusions for your guidance, and for 
the guidance of those whom you are misguiding on 
these great matters. I shall not in this place defend 
any of them by lengthened arguments and explana- 
tions, as I have already examined them and minutely 



Arguing With a Turnip 229 

reasoned upon every one of them in my "Patriotism 
and Popular Education" — see the fifth chapter, 
called "Patriotism and Internationalism." If I now 
advance any proposition that you wish to challenge 
or deny, please read that chapter carefully, and you 
will find yourself answered, not by vasty vague 
abstract phrases, but by a chain of clear connected 
arguments. It is open to you to refute any of my 
arguments, or to dispute any of my conclusions, and 
to prove that I am wrong. It will not be open to you 
after this to spread class hatred and disunion, and 
to vent mischievous unworkable theories that tend 
to the disintegration of the British Empire, and to 
the annihilation of all social order. 

There are on the face of the earth some fifty 
more or less distinct nations, communities and tribes, 
living under more or less distinct forms of govern- 
ment. These fifty nations have more or less dis- 
tinct and opposing separate national interests. Every 
one of them is always more or less in collision, or in 
competition with some of the others for the posses- 
sion of fertile territory, commercial gain, dominion 
over inferior races, or for some other material or 
fancied advantages, or for the land or sea power 
which will put them in a position of superiority to 
their neighbours in the constant struggle for the 
possession of these advantages. 



230 My Dear Wells 

These fifty nations are composed of men of the 
widest differences and antagonisms of all sorts — in 
race, in colour, in intellectual capacity, in bodily 
capacity, in religion, in habits, in morals, in adapt- 
ability to opposite climatic conditions, in adaptability 
to varying forms of civilization, in adaptability to 
citizenship in any prescribed and enforced form of 
civilized government. This opposition of national 
interests is perpetual and universal. You are not 
dealing with a homogeneous herd of men. You 
cannot gather together in one flock this great human 
zoo and pipe them into your International sheep-fold 
by playing to them on your Pan's pipes a selection 
of vasty vague phras'es about a "coming supremacy 
of order and justice." The more you try to drive 
them all into your International sheep-fold, the 
nearer you bring them all to its gates, the more 
opportunities you will give them of tearing each 
other into pieces. Look around, my dear Wells. 
Open your eyes, pop! Awake, awake to facts! 
See Internationalism actually in operation, every- 
where the agent of disunion, disorder, and inter- 
necine strife, everywhere spreading the anarchy that 
ends in the most brutal militarism. Watch the devel- 
opments of Internationalism in Russia. If you would 
spare mankind the curse of ceaseless warfare, I 
beseech you to allow the diverse human herds to 
remain in the families and groups that they natu- 
rally tend to form, under the diverse governments 



Arguing With a Turnip 231 

that the most capable and strongest amongst them 
can establish over them. 

'Tenshun now, my dear Wells, while I give you in 
four words the master key to the present world 
situation. 

Patriotism is an instinct. 

Patriotism cannot strictly be called a virtue, since 
a virtue is a habit that is obviously advisable for men 
to practise for their own individual good and inter- 
est, or for the good and interest of others. A 
healthy man has considerable liberty of choice 
whether or not he practises a certain virtue. It is 
largely an affair of his reason, his discretion, his will. 
But an instinct is a driving force within him which 
often compels his obedience against his reason, 
against his knowledge, against his will, and against 
his own good and interest. 

Still less is Patriotism a political opinion, some- 
thing which can be determined by voting. This is 
the common error. In England for the generation 
before the war, Patriotism was esteemed to be a 
vicious political opinion which led the nations into 
war, and was therefore to be voted down. When 
the war came, Patriotism proved itself to be an 
irresistible instinct, and swept the country. 

Patriotism is the instinct of collective self-preser- 
vation in a nation. Nations that are without it, 
or are poorly endowed with it, succumb to their 



232 My Dear Wells 

rivals and perish. It is a universal instinct. I shall 
presently show you, my dear Wells, that you, your- 
self, are richly endowed with a spurious kind of 
Patriotism. 

Patriotism is incipient in every tribe, in every 
clan, in every community, in every family. It 
springs up vigorously as soon as any class or race 
of men find that they have common interests to 
defend. The brand new republic of Panama is 
already ebullient with Patriotism, and so are the 
new nations of Europe. 

The primary instincts are so necessary to the indi- 
vidual, or to the family, or to the race that Nature 
gives them all in excess. In this excess they are often 
unreasonable, unreasoning, absurd, unscrupulous, 
mischievous, and dangerous to their possessors. 
Patriotism has these defects like all the other pri- 
mary instincts. It has other defects of its own. It 
is often boastful and blatant, over-reaching, and 
sometimes runs to a destructive megalomania, as 
with the Germans. Seeing that Patriotism often 
exhibits these bad qualities, many worthy people seek 
to abolish it, not perceiving that it is one of the 
primary instincts and cannot be abolished. 

Some time ago I was betrayed into a heated argu- 
ment upon the nature of Patriotism with a Pacifist, 
a very violent quarrelsome Pacifist. He was a small 
aggressive loud-voiced person, with a round head 
which contained an incessant tongue that poured out 



Arguing With a Turnip 233 

much vasty vagueness. He trumpeted violent denun- 
ciations of Patriotism, holding it accountable for all 
of the evils that have recently befallen the world, 
and demanding its instant abolition that we might 
settle down to universal perpetual peace. I pointed 
out that Patriotism is a universal primary instinct; 
that though it often manifests itself in undesirable 
and mischievous ways, yet being an instinct, it is 
impossible to root it out of human nature. If we 
could utterly destroy Patriotism tonight, it would 
spring up afresh all the world over tomorrow, would 
draw into unity any group of men that had racial 
affinities and common interests to defend, and after 
much bloodshed, would mould them into a nation. 

I argued on these lines, giving him solid undeni- 1 
able facts and instances, and appealing to his reason- 
ing faculties. He did not reply to me with argu- 
ment, any more than you do, my dear Wells. He 
called me a liar, and other abusive names — a most 
pugnacious Pacifist, a most bellicose Pacifist. He 
thumped the table with his fist, and waggled and 
rolled his round head, and blazed out in fresh exe- 
crations of Patriotism. I grieve to say that I also 
got excited and angry, as I produced more facts, 
more evidence, more arguments. I showed him 
Patriotism as a living universal force, working be- 
hind all the great world movements, and directing 
them. He merely vociferated — the round head 
waggled and shook with obstinate denial of fact 



234 My Dear Wells 

I and argument — I paused for a moment and looked 
'; at that round waggling head — by a sudden illumina- 
tion I became aware that it was not a head at all, 
j but a turnip, a veritable turnip placed on the top of 
his neck and shoulders. 

I do not say that it was an ordinary vegetable 
turnip. It was connected by ligatures with his 
digestive and respiratory organs, and doubtless cer- 
tain processes of a more or less cogitative nature 
went on inside it. But for all purposes of ratiocina- 
tion, so far as regards all power of comprehension of 
sovereign facts, and their coordination with eternal 
laws and principles, it was a turnip. After a shock 
of surprise which took away my breath, I rushed out 
of the room. I had wasted a good hour arguing 
with a turnip. But it looked very much like a head. 
Speaking of this experience with one of our lead- 
ing surgeons, he told me in confidence that autopsies 
reveal to them that large numbers of our population 
possess these quasi-heads. Medical men jealously 
guard this fact as a professional secret, not wishing 
to wound the self-esteem of their patients. The man 
who has a human turnip growing on the top of his 
shoulders, never suspects that it isn't a real head. 
Indeed the outer semblance is perfect. The incident 
I have related made so powerful an impression upon 
me, that whenever I happen to see a bunch of turnips 
outside a vegetable shop, I hurry away for fear that 
they may begin to denounce Patriotism, and that I 



Arguing With a Turnip 235 

may become involved in an argument with them. 
How many precious hours we waste arguing with / 
turnips ! / 

No doubt, my dear Wells, Patriotism has its 
unwise manifestations and excesses which have often 
worked much mischief in the world. So has the 
sexual instinct. War itself has not wrought more 
ravages, wrecked more homes, destroyed more lives. 
But very few of us propose to abolish the sexual 
instinct on that account. My Aunt Julia indeed is 
so obsessed with the contemplation of the wholesale 
evils attendant upon its excesses and irregularities, 
that she is forming a League for its total suppression. 
By the way, my dear Wells, my Aunt Julia is a great 
admirer of yours. She reads everything you write, 
and daily spreads your fame broadcast among her 
large circles of acquaintances. 

If then we recognize that Patriotism is not a 
political opinion, but is a permanent universal 
instinct, we get a clue to the cause of the present 
confusions and disorders of the world, and also a 
clue to the only way that will lead the nations out of 
chaos, and enable them to settle down into something 
approaching peace and prosperity. It is useless to 
try to root out a universal instinct. As fast as we 
stamp it down, it springs up again. Instead of try- 
ing to suppress it, we must seek to turn it into its 
legitimate channels, and keep it from overflowing 
its lawful bounds. I would have you notice, my dear 



236 My Dear Wells 

Wells, that as your Collectivist theories are met and 
defeated by the permanent instinct of individual self- 
preservation, so your International theories are met 
and defeated by the permanent instinct of national 
self-preservation, that is, by Patriotism. 

'Tenshun once more, pop! 

Pacifism and Internationalism are perverted forms 
of the universal instinct of Patriotism. The Pacifist 
seeing the evils and miseries and horrors of war, 
votes himself into citizenship of a country where 
war is impossible. He naturalizes himself in that 
country; feels the same affection for it that the ordi- 
nary citizen feels for his own country; distorts his 
whole mental vision in favour of his imaginary be- 
loved land; works for it, is ready to fight and die 
for it. There is no such determined Patriot as your 
convinced Pacifist. He automatically becomes the 
enemy of his own country, which in his view is 
always governed by wicked men whose 'Vision is 
smeared with blood." He therefore brims over 
with Patriotism for every country but his own. He 
is a multiple, universal Patriot. 

Internationalism is another perverted form of 
Patriotism. The Internationalist, seeing that his 
own country and every country in the world is imper- 
fectly governed by men who make mistakes, who are 
short-sighted and faulty in many ways, — seeing this 
deplorable state of affairs, the Internationalist 



Arguing With a Turnip 237 

vilifies and abjures his native land, and enrolls him- 
self as a citizen of a world state where there is a 
"supremacy of justice and order," where men are 
free from "error and passion," where there are 
"sane adjustments" against earthquakes, and where 
omelettes grow on every tree. 

The Internationalist throbs with a passionate 
Patriotism for this delightful world state. He dis- 
torts or ignores or denies all facts that lie in the way 
of its realization. Though his chief accusation 
against our present civilization is that it leads to 
war, yet he welcomes and invokes an incalculable 
amount of bloodshed and fighting for an Internation- 
alist State. Seeing that his own government is one 
of the obstacles to its establishment, he inflames him- 
self against his native land, brings false charges 
against its rulers, seeks to undermine the social order 
under which he lives, and which alone protects him 
from anarchy. 

You, my dear Wells, offer us a conspicuous exam- 
ple of this perverted Patriotism. Read again your 
papers on Russia. See how eager you are to con- 
done the worst crimes of Bolshevism because it is 
an attempt at International Government. Your 
heart warms towards Lenin, though you say he is a 
rotten little incessant intriguer who ought to be 
killed by some moral sanitary authority. Never 
mind that. He is a brother Patriot in your Inter- 
national State. Again, all through the same papers 



238 My Dear Wells 

you show a spirit of rancid hostility to the British 
Empire. You bring constant accusations and insinu- 
ations against its rulers. While you laud and admire 
the Bolshevist leaders, and sympathize and frater- 
nize with them, you have nothing but disparagement 
and blame for English statesmen. All this, my dear 
Wells, is Patriotism gone astray, the perversion of 
the wholesome instinct which stirs the normal man 
to love his country; to love its very soil as the clay 
which has moulded him and his fathers and the 
mighty men who have begotten their breed within its 
borders, and have made it a home for him and his 
children; stirs him to find excuses for his country's 
faults as he would find excuses for the faults of his 
mother; to be jealous for its honour and dignity 
as for the honour and dignity of her that bore him; 
stirs him to take a pride in his country's achievements 
because they have been wrought by his own blood 
and kin; stirs him to maintain and fortify the inheri- 
tance that has been bequeathed to him, and to strive 
that it shall not be impoverished and diminished and 
taken away from his children. 

Thus works the wholesome instinct of Patriotism 
in the normal man, and by its operation, nations are 
preserved from internal disruption, and from defeat 
and destruction at the hands of their enemies. 
Internationalism is inverted and perverted Patriot- 
ism. You, my dear Wells, have the instinct of 
Patriotism fully developed, but it works the wrong 



Arguing With a Turnip 239 

way, towards the insecurity and disintegration of 
your own country. Reverse the engines of your 
mind, and become a loyal British citizen. Compared 
with Internationalist Russia, England isn't such a 
very bad country to live in. You don't feel inclined 
to hum a bar or two of the National Anthem, I 
suppose? 



« « J 1 J I 1 K ; J 



The first six notes of "God Save the King." 

International Patriots have an enormous advan- 
tage over National Patriots. A National Patriot 
can offer to his discontented fellow citizens no better 
land to live in than their own country where, as is 
obvious to all of them, they are not receiving their 
deserts. But an International Patriot can offer to 
every man who is dissatisfied with his present con- 
dition, a title of citizenship in a land where every- 
body gets his deserts, which is perfectly governed 
and administered by perfectly wise, honest, unselfish 
comrades who are free from "error and passion" — • 
a land where there is a perpetual "supremacy of 
order and justice," and where the most delicious 
succulent omelettes grow on every tree for everybody 
to pluck. Now you know, my dear Wells, why these 
International Paradises are so attractive, and why 
their promoters are so popular. 



240 My Dear Wells 

'Tenshun once more! pop! I have one more 
unpalatable dose of plain indisputable truth which I 
must invite you to swallow. If you reject it, none 
the less will it be the truth. 

International good will and amity and the benefits 
to all nations which are to be obtained from general 
kindly International intercourse, can only flow 
through the channels cut by National Patriotism. 
The' desperate need of the world today is that a 
strong enduring national government should be set 
up and confirmed in each of the capital cities of the 
respective countries. Facilities for external trade, 
mutual concessions and civilities, offers and offices 
of friendship, a clearly defined foreign policy, inter- 
national arrangements of all kinds, must be con- 
ducted in each country by the agency of a national 
government. 

If that government is not firmly established, if it 
does not speak with the authority of the nation, if it 
is not supported by the general voice of all its citi- 
zens, no international arrangements that it enters 
into can be valid and binding, no international good 
understanding can be obtained. Now a government 
is secure and is favourably placed for entering into 
international negotiations and thereby establishing 
international good will and amity, in proportion as 
a wise and resolute Patriotism of its people rallies 
them to support it. So much sober stedfast 
Patriotism in a nation, so much power it gives to its 



Arguing With a Turnip 241 

government to enter into stable international rela- 
tions that make for peace and good will on earth. 

Without this general Patriotism behind it, the 
foreign policy of any government must helplessly 
flounder towards international confusion and dis- 
order. When, my dear Wells, you go to Russia 
and hobnob with an enemy of your country who is 
sending money to corrupt its navy, — when you ask 
support for his crazy tyrannical government and 
defame your own, you are not merely adding to the 
insecurities and dangers that beset your own country, 
you are also stirring up International strife. It is 
Internationalism, as you will find, that leads to "war 
and war and more war." It is Internationalism in 
Russia that is today the chief hinderer and disturber 
of the world's peace. It is Internationalism that is 
the great enemy of international amity and good will 
amongst the nations. Firmly established govern- 
ments in each capital of the world, that is, govern- 
ments supported by the Patriotism of their respec- 
tive peoples, are the only agents that can promote 
and diffuse peaceable and friendly and brotherly 
international intercourse all the world over. 

Retire into your chamber and ponder these 
matters. 

Patriotically and therefore Internationally yours, 
Henry Arthur Jones. 

March 11, 1921. 



LETTER SEVENTEEN. 
GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS. 

My Dear Wells, — 

In Aristopia the constant misuse of abstract words 
and phrases was found to work such evil in the social 
and political economy of the nation that it became 
necessary to enact stringent legislation to prevent it. 
The Court for Assessing the Value of Abstract 
Words and Phrases is the largest and busiest division 
of the Aristopian Palace of Justice. Every man who 
uses an abstract word or phrase without being able 
to> define the exact sense in which he uses it, and to 
justify its use in that sense, is instantly taken before 
the Court, and after a fair hearing, is heavily fined 
according to the measure of his offence. The worst 
delinquents, and all coiners of mischievous abstract 
phrases and terms, are sent to prison without the 
option of a fine. 

My old friend Professor Sophologos, who is 
Chief Corrector of wrong opinions in the National 
University of Aristopia, told me the other day that 
the very large amount of personal and civic liberty 
which he and his fellow citizens enjoy, can be traced 
to the fact that for two generations past no Aris- 
242 



Gathering Up the Fragments 243 

topian has been allowed to use the word "Liberty" 
without being called upon to explain definitely and 
concretely what he means by it. 

I was sitting down to lunch when Sophologos 
called, and I asked him to join me. I had beside 
my plate a copy of your reply to Mr. Winston 
Churchill on Bolshevism. Being unable to obtain 
a cocktail before my meals in America, I use your 
article as an aperitif. I find that a few hearty 
chuckles over its absurdities greatly assist my diges- 
tion. After lunch, I handed your article to Sopholo- 
gos to read, and lighted a cigarette while I watched 
its effect upon him. As he advanced into its 
fallacies and nebulosities, and got deeper and 
deeper into its vasty vagueness, his face dark- 
ened into sterner and yet sterner frowns. From 
my intimate acquaintance with what he was read- 
ing, I could give a good guess as to which of 
your fallacies or inconsistencies was provoking 
his displeasure. By the time Sophologos had 
finished reading it, his face was a mask of grave 
and scornful disapproval. He laid it upon the table, 
and for some seconds sat silently regarding its head- 
line, "The Anti-Bolshevik Mind." At length he 
uttered this brief comment : — "If any Aristopian had 
written that paper, he would have been sent to prison 
for the remainder of his life." 

I have now perhaps made sufficient tests of the 
quality of your thinking in this reply of yours to 



244 My Dear Wells 

Mr. Churchill. It has proved to be a valuable 
Wellsometer. There are in its 537 lines many more 
sentences and phrases and passages which tempt- 
ingly offer themselves to be unstripped and operated 
upon. But I must refrain. Sufficient unto the day is 
the amount of vasty vagueness that we have already 
dissected. 

In the comparative absence of high comedy from 
our English stage, I find a satisfactory substitute in 
contemplating the magisterial attitude you adopt 
towards poor Mr. Churchill, and the lofty tone of 
the reproofs you administer to him. In your 
majestic cocksure philosophic dignity of bearing 
towards him, you show yourself to be sublime — or 
at least, not more than one step removed from it. 

Nothing in the whole paper pleases me more than 
your portentous declaration, "Mr. Churchill has an 
undisciplined mind." You say so. You talk, my 
dear Wells ! You talk ! You have told me with the 
same severity of indiscrimination that I also have "a 
hasty ill-trained mind." You say so. Everybody 
who opposes you has an undisciplined or a hasty ill- 
trained mind. Do you mind my pointing out to you 
that you do not settle a question that is in dispute 
by telling your opponent that he has an "undisci- 
plined" or u a hasty, ill-trained" mind? That may 
seem to you a convenient way of escaping from argu- 
ment, and of course if you find yourself floored, you 
may as well say that as anything else. Nevertheless 



Gathering Up the Fragments 245 

it is a bad habit, my dear Wells, akin to your other 
bad habits of flatly contradicting yourself, and of 
making the most monstrous assumptions and asser- 
tions without any foundation for them. Try to cure 
yourself of all these bad habits. I should like to feel 
that in our next controversy, you will arouse me to 
some energy of response, and force me to a good 
stiff tussle with whatever reasoning powers you may 
discover yourself to possess. 

We will now put your reply to Mr. Churchill — 
The Anti-Bolshevik Mind — upon a handy shelf, 
keeping it within reach for ready reference as we 
may find future need to explore it more thoroughly. 
We will again briefly summarize it as containing: 

17 lines of doubtful argument upon the matters in 

dispute. 

165 lines of detraction and abuse of Mr. Churchill. 

149 lines of illogical advancement of your own theories. 

206 lines of unclassifiable generalities and irrelevancies. 

537 lines— TOTAL. 

Throughout my examination of this truly 
"amazing" paper of yours, I have not been 
concerned to defend Mr. Churchill. So far as 
you have attacked his personal character, it is his 
own affair. So far as you have attacked his political 
opinions, motives, aims and actions, I have only to 
inquire how he answers the one supreme question 
before our nation today, "Shall we put into opera- 



246 My Dear Wells 

tion unworkable International theories and break 
up the British Empire, bringing upon ourselves 
the misery, horror and chaos that must inevitably 
follow any attempt to establish an International 
government; or on the other hand, shall we gather 
ourselves in a sober resolute Patriotism to consoli- 
date the British Empire, forgetting for the time our 
internal dissensions and class hatreds, and bending 
all our efforts to establish ourselves in unity and 
security, that our national government may be an 
effective instrument for promoting International 
good understanding and good will among the peo- 
ples of the earth?" 

With regard to that question, if Mr. Churchill 
were ten times the bold bad man you make him out 
to be, I should still think it most fortunate that he, 
and not yourself, has a share in guiding our national 
affairs. 

Parenthetically, I read in this morning's papers 
that the reprehensible " Anti-Bolshevik mind" is 
developing very rapidly over all Russia, and making 
furious manifestations of its vicious activity. Petro- 
grad is reported to be in flames, and there are whole- 
sale massacres on both sides. You will remember, 
my dear Wells, that you hold two flatly contradic- 
tory opinions about Bolshevism. You tell us that 
it is a formidable force which will overwhelm our 
world civilization unless we subsidize it and keep it 
in power. You also tell us that it is a small negligi- 



Gathering Up the Fragments 247 

ble movement conducted by rather amiable persons 
— a harmless temporary little outbreak which will 
die out if only we don't make a fuss about it. You 
might tell us which of these two contradictory 
opinions you happen to be holding for the moment, 
in view of the present Russian situation. 

You also told us that the Bolshevist government 
was firmly established and was likely to endure. 
With equal emphasis, you told us that it was by no 
means firmly established and that it behoved us to 
make haste and prop it up. The astounding capacity 
of your giant mind that has room in it for all these 
opinions at the same time ! 

Either Bolshevist government will endure or it 
will not endure. As you have prophesied both 
things, whatever happens I shall be able to con- 
gratulate you on the fulfilment of one of your 
prophecies. Well, well, we will put you and Mr. 
Churchill on the shelf for the time. Which of your 
numerous philosophical writings would you like me 
to examine next? 

You will have noticed that this reply of yours to 
Mr. Churchill not only gave us a measure of your 
capacity to think for other people, but it also gave 
us an unusually good opportunity to search and 
scrutinize your cherished theories. Frankly, my dear 
Wells, what do you think of these theories of yours, 
in the light that I have thrown upon them? If you 
will pass them in thoughtful review, calmly, dispas- 



248 My Dear Wells 

sionately, impartially weighing them in your mind, 
I am sure you will come to the conclusion that essen- 
tially they are the crude theories of a rebellious shop 
assistant with a confessed tendency to arson,* and 
a fatuous loquacity about the supremacy of justice 
and order; with a woeful continuity of hatred 
against his own country, and a woeful discontinuity 
of argument to justify that hatred; active for the 
dissolution and destruction of our present social 
order; impotent and bankrupt for the construction 
of any social order whatever. Isn't that the way 
your theories now strike you? Yes, that's just the 
way they strike me. And it is upon the basis of 
"thinking" such as I have analysed that we are asked 
to break down the present social order, and destroy 
the British Empire ! 

We do not allow unqualified persons to treat the 
human body, to prescribe for its ailments, and to 
operate upon its vital organs. We see that a long 
practical training is necessary for anyone who 
charges himself with the care of the health of his 
fellow men. If we find a man practising medicine 
without any knowledge of the organs of the human 
body and their functions, we clap him into jail. 

A nation is a social organism, self-contained and 
individual ; dependent upon the cooperation of all its 
organs and functions to the one supreme end of 

*"I would have set fire to that place {his employer's shop) if 1 
had not been convinced it was overinsured" — H. G. Wells, Russia 
in the Shadows* 



Gathering Up the Fragments 249 

maintaining and continuing its existence. Its instinct 
of self-preservation is called Patriotism. It is as 
delicately balanced, as cunningly coordinated in its 
thousand intricacies and interdependencies of organ 
and function, as the human body. Yet we allow any 
noisy ignorant quack of the market place to doctor 
this infinitely complex social organism, and to oper- 
ate upon its vital organs. And instead of clapping 
him into jail, we permit him to continue in practice, 
and sometimes make him a Right Honourable. 

The worst quacks of ail are those who are now 
persuading the sickly pain-wracked nations to reju- 
venate themselves into one compact wholesome social 
body by putting themselves into the International 
mince-meat machine. The International mince-meat 
machine chops and grinds them to pieces one after 
the other as they come between its teeth. Don't take 
my word for this. See the process in actual opera- 
tion. See the latest news from Russia. See every 
nation in the world shaken and divided against 
itself, its industrial and economical activities para- 
lyzed, hastening towards civil war and anarchy in 
exact proportion as International Theories spread 
amongst its citizens. "Not without blood" as you 
observe, will these International theories of yours 
be carried into action. What a glimmering you had 
there, my dear Wells ! 

The multiplication of railways and aeroplanes and 
swift communications bringing the various inhab- 



250 My Dear Wells 

itants of the earth into closer intercourse with each 
other, does undoubtedly offer them facilities for 
better understanding and for good will and amity 
according as certain individuals and certain nations 
amongst them have common palpable interests, or 
ties of blood. But no development of the means of 
communication, no universal railway, or telegraphic, 
or aerial service, will ever turn a Chinaman into a 
white man. Nor do you change a negro's nature 
to your own by sitting in a tramcar beside him and 
talking about universal brotherhood. So far and so 
long as men have radical antipathies and opposing 
main interests, the multiplication of swift communi- 
cations gives them better opportunities for fighting 
each other, as well as better opportunities for under- 
standing each other. 

, The evil result of all this quackery is that we are 
diverted from searching into the true causes of our 
social and international maladies, and from applying 
effective remedies to such of them as are remediable. 
When the quack is busy pushing his panacea, the true 
physician is flouted and driven from the door. How 
long it was before we learned in treating the human 
body that the symptoms are not the disease itself, 
but a warning of the disease. We have yet to learn 
the same hard lesson in treating the social organism. 
Clinically yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
March 16, 1921. 



LETTER EIGHTEEN. 
THE WELLS LEAGUE. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I have two pieces of news to communicate to you. 
One of them is good news, and will give you just 
cause for delight and pride. The other is bad news, 
which will give you some qualms, and will demand 
your very serious consideration. I will impart the 
good news first. 

I have mentioned that my Aunt Julia is one of 
your most constant readers and most devoted 
admirers. I don't think you have ever met her, 
but I daresay she has written you copious pages of 
her grateful appreciation. My Aunt Julia possesses 
inexhaustible energy; physical, vocal, epistolary, 
domestic, parochial, social, municipal, general advi- 
sory and universally superintendent. She has sat 
upon (in both senses) more committees, and organ- 
ized more societies than any man or woman who 
ever lived. She is of no certain age. She is peren- 
nial. Her figure is short and stout and has no 
undulations. It was obviously made to fit a succes- 
sion of intractable suits of clothes of a plain stubborn 
material. Her features are square, immobile, and 
251 



252 My Dear Wells 

impervious to the wear and tear of life. She gen- 
erally wears a velvet toque, shaped like a pork pie. 

I am a man of few prejudices and quirks, yet I 
must own that I have an unconquerable aversion 
for my Aunt Julia's toques. I hate them almost as 
much as I hate your theories. Now there is good 
reason why I should hate your theories, my dear 
Wells, as I hope I have sufficiently shown. But 
there is no reason why I should hate my Aunt Julia's 
toques, except that I always see them above her face. 

The good news that I have to convey to you is that 
my Aunt Julia has formed a Wells League to rally 
and consolidate your admirers and gather them into 
a cult. The sole qualfication for belonging to the 
Wells League is that the candidate is unable, or is 
indisposed, to think for himself, and is desirous of 
having his thinking done for him. There is no 
charge for membership. There is no liability or 
tiresome obligation of any kind. Everything is 
optional, except the simple initiatory rite of re- 
nouncing the troublesome business of thinking for 
oneself. 

Aunt Julia is giving all her abundant energy to 
the organization of the League. Members are 
enrolling in almost countless numbers. The over- 
whelming response of both sexes and all classes has 
astonished me. Yet when one recalls how severe, 
how painful, how fatiguing is the effort to think for 
oneself, it is not to be wondered at that the great 



The Wells League 253 

majority of our fellow citizens should hasten to 
relieve themselves of this burdensome and vexatious 
exercise. Aunt Julia has made the wise provision, 
that although members of the Wells League relin- 
quish all pretensions to think for themselves upon 
abstract and complex matters, they shall not be de- 
barred from talking about them. Indeed they are to 
be encouraged to discuss and debate them on all occa- 
sions. She judges that this provision will ensure 
the League permanent popularity and attractiveness. 
She has also designed a neat little metal badge of 
membership. It is oval in shape, and its motto — 
"Wells thinks forme" — runs round its edge, and 
encircles a portrait of yourself in the appropriate 
attitude of "thinking for half Europe." Members 
will be expected to wear the badge on all convenient 
occasions. Aunt Julia pronounces the badge to be 
"very pretty and artistic." She is one of those who 
use the word "artistic." 

Aunt Julia perceives that this great increase in the 
numbers of people who have to be "thought for," 
calls for a corresponding increase in the number of 
people who will have to think for them. She there- 
fore contemplates the foundation of a "Wells Insti- 
tute of Thinkers for Other People," to supplement 
the activities of the Wells League, and to provide 
an enormous amount of mental pabulum of a quality 
that can be assimilated without the least exercise of 
thought. She has inspected several sites for the 



254 My Dear Wells 

erection of the Wells Institute, and has fixed upon 
one that adjoins the grounds of the Idiot Asylum at 
Earlswood in Surrey. She hopes that you will 
undertake the general supervision of the Wells 
Institute of Thinkers for Other People, and train 
its professors. And of course she has nominated 
you as President of both the League and the 
Institute. 

So much information I have been able to glean 
from Aunt Julia about her plans for perpetuating 
your system of social and political philosophy. 
Wishing to give you a pleasant surprise, she 
enjoined me to secrecy, but I could not refrain from 
communicating the good news to you. 

And now, my dear Wells, I must prepare you for 
the reception of a piece of bad news that I fear will 
sadly mar, and perhaps annul all the pleasure you 
have felt in hearing about the Wells League and 
the Wells Institute. I regret to tell you that every 
day Archibald Spofforth grows more and more 
infuriated against you. Sometimes he sits in his 
chair muttering threats and imprecations. At other 
times he rages up and down the room, shaking his 
fist, and using most unseemly language in denuncia- 
tion of your theories. From the first, Spofforth has 
placed himself towards your theories in the wholly 
disrespectful attitude which Subtle assumes towards 
Face in the opening lines of the "Alchemist," Lat- 



The Wells League 255 

terly he has grown more violently abusive, and seems 
unable to control his indignation from passing into 
some active manifestation. In vain do I urge him 
to have patience with you, to copy my own modera- 
tion and gentle persuasive manner towards you. I 
point out to him that you have occasional glimmer- 
ings, and that I have every hope of ultimately 
making a good British citizen of you. Spofforth 
remains implacable and relentless. At times I 
almost hear him sharpening his knife. 

I think it only friendly to warn you of the danger- 
ously explosive state of Spofforth's feelings. There 
is something to be said in explanation, if not in 
justification, of his inveterate animus against you. 
Spofforth hates, loathes, execrates, detests, despises, 
abhors, abominates, extravasates, eviscerates, con- 
founds, conspues, condemns and consigns to eternal 
bottomless perdition, all people who think for other 
people upon any subject before carefully thinking it 
out for themselves. That is Spofforth's idiosyncrasy, 
stated in the fewest words. You see, my dear Wells, 
you have touched Spofforth on the raw. 

I do not wish to cause you unnecessary alarm. I 
may be unduly anxious about you. Spofforth may 
not carry out his threats. You may be sure he shall 
not, if I can restrain him. But I do advise you to 
be constantly on your guard. For the present it will 
be better for you to keep silence on all social and 



256 My Dear Wells 

political problems. This will give him time to cool 
down. Beyond this, I think you will be wise to take 
some measures to propitiate Spofforth. 

I know that your first impulse will be to call him 
"an out-and-out liar," or a "silly ranter," or an 
"excited imbecile." Don't do that, my dear Wells. 
I don't in the least mind your applying these terms 
to myself. In fact, I like it, since it gives me a 
pleasing security that you cannot meet my argu- 
ments. But you mustn't take that tone with 
Spofforth. It wouldn't be safe in the present state 
of his feelings towards you. Spofforth isn't a mild- 
mannered, easy-tempered man like myself, disposed 
to let you off lightly, and always ready to give you a 
pat on the back, and say, "Brave lad!" when you 
get an occasional glimmering. 

No, you must try other tactics with Spofforth. 
You do see how necessary it is for you to appease 
him, don't you? First, there is your personal safety 
to be considered. Then I suppose you intend to go 
on thinking for other people, and to promulgate 
more theories as fast as they come into your head. 
You don't want Spofforth to be always lying in wait 
to tickle you with what he calls his Ithuriel fallacy- 
piercer. You want to have a quiet undisturbed time 
to formulate a world policy for the yellow races, 
or to prophesy the ultimate absorption of Buddhism 
by the Salvation Army, or any other gigantic 



The Wells League 257 

apocalyptic romance that happens to strike your 
fancy. 

Now what shall we do to mollify Spofforth? You 
won't of course attempt to argue with him. If I 
have any influence with you, my dear Wells, let me 
implore you not to pit your argumentative powers 
against Spofforth. Argument isn't your strong 
point. You recognize that, don't you? But you are 
a dandy-cock at theory. Let us put our heads 
together and fix up some theory that will offer an 
excuse for your grievous errors and fallacies, and 
dispose Spofforth to a more tolerant and lenient 
frame of mind towards you. 

I suggest we should tell Spofforth that your brain 
works in that way ; that in thinking virulently against 
your country; in stirring disaffection, and sowing the 
seeds of revolution amongst those who are unable 
to think for themselves ; in accusing all rich men and 
all powerful men of dishonestly intercepting wealth 
and influence that belong to others; in shaking the 
foundations of social order; and in spreading 
unworkable theories that tend to the disintegration 
and dissolution of the British Empire — in all these 
matters you are helplessly under the control and 
direction of certain particles in the convolutions of 
the gray matter of your cerebrum, which particles 
vibrate in a certain manner and cause you to give 
utterance accordingly. 



258 My Dear Wells 

I know it isn't a very good excuse. In fact, it's 
a very bad excuse. But can you think of a better 
one ? If you offer that explanation,* I don't see what 
Spofforth can say in reply. He can't possibly prove 
that your brain doesn't work in that way. And if 
your brain does work in that way, it is plainly useless 
for him to get angry with you, and to work himself 
into these ungovernable rages against you. With 
your permission then, I will offer that explanation 
to Spofforth, and will try to induce him to accept it. 

I hope you will take my mediation with Spofforth 
as a proof of my own desire to open an easy way 
for you, as time goes on, and as your cerebral proc- 
esses undergo some salutary changes, to become a 
good loyal attached citizen of the British Empire. 
In this spirit of good will towards you, I subscribe 
myself, 

Hopefully yours, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 
March 19, 1921. 



LETTER NINETEEN. 

A CHALLENGE. 

My Dear Wells, — 

I have now examined with great care and 
minuteness the quality and texture of your thinking 
upon the gravest matters that are shaking and per- 
plexing the minds of men all over the civilized 
world. Incidentally I have also examined your 
economic, Collectivist, and International theories 
and have inquired upon what foundations they 
rest of solid facts and actual forces at work in 
the world we are living in. If I may make a rough 
generalization, I will say that in dealing with all 
these complicated questions, you do not deduce your 
theories from facts; you deduce your facts from 
your theories and force them to fit. If at times I 
have seemed to trifle, and play carelessly round all 
these deadly serious questions, that is not because 
I have ceased, even for a moment, to apprehend their 
sovereign exigence and importance. While this has 
been always in my mind, my attention has yet been 
frequently diverted to the aspect of amusing and 
crazy absurdity which your theories offered to my 



260 My Dear Wells 

examination. Let me recall one instance out of the 
many that I have pointed out. 

You tell us in your fifth paper that it was not 
until you visited Russia and saw the widely spread 
destitution there, that you perceived that the abo- 
lition of marketing and shopping and of private 
property caused nine-tenths of the houses and 
buildings in any town to become useless heaps,. and 
to dissolve away. What became of the inhabitants 
did not seem to trouble you. You had to journey to 
Russia before you could open your mind to this 
perception. It came upon you as a revelation. 
Surely it is what every man possessing an ounce of 
common sense can perceive at a moment's glance. 
Well, you received this revelation in the Kremlin. 
How has it affected your theories? Do you still 
advocate the abolition of private property? 

My dear Wells, it is by reason of "thinking" such 
as yours, carried into governmental action by your 
co-thinkers aand co-theorists, that civilization has 
almost perished in Russia, and that its hapless people 
have endured their three years' terrible martyrdom. 
It may well be that by reason of "thinking" such as 
yours, carried into governmental action by your 
co-thinkers and co-theorists, that the British Empire 
will be shaken till it cracks at its centre, and that 
our own countrymen may fall for a season under a 
brutal military despotism, kindred to that which 
has starved and pillaged Russia and sacrificed mil- 



A Challenge 261 

lions of the lives of its workers. In the measure 
that your theories are carried into operation will 
they surely produce the same effect in Britain that 
they have produced in Russia. 

I cannot think that you have set yourself for one 
single hour to study these questions with the deter- 
mination to follow your theories to their inevitable 
consequences. You complacently advocate the abo- 
lition of private property and the destruction of the 
present social order. You evidently desire the dis- 
integration and dissolution of the British Empire, 
and its absorption in some Collectivist International 
State. You stir your fellow citizens to work for 
the attainment of these ends. You claim to do this 
in the interests of the working classes, that they and 
their children may take possession of the wealth and 
influence which rich men have stolen from them. 

Have you ever tried to disengage your mind from 
your theories, and for one quiet hour to think apart 
from them? Have you ever tried to picture the 
reactions all over the world that would follow the 
break-up of the British Empire? Have you ever 
tried to realize what would be the consequences to 
the British working classes for whose benefit you 
counsel its dissolution? They would turn and curse 
you. For be sure there can be no easy, gradual, 
peaceful, dissolution of the British Empire. "Not 
without blood" will it be accomplished, as you your- 
self discern. It would be the British working classes 



262 My Dear-Wells 

who would bear the brunt of that tremendous world 
disaster. Upon them and their children would be 
visited the heaviest sufferings and calamities. Be 
quite sure of that. Do you wish me to prove it to 
you? 

I cannot believe that you have ever sat down 
with a clear unbiased mind to weigh and consider 
all these matters that flow so glibly from your pen. I 
cannot believe that you have resolved, first to tell 
yourself the truth about them, and then to tell that 
truth to those who accept you as a social and political 
guide. Surely if you had taken the trouble to search 
carefully into these matters, and to weigh your judge- 
ments before you delivered them, you would have 
avoided the worst of the flagrant self-contradictions, 
inconsistencies, and fallacies that I have exposed. 

Throughout these letters I have allowed myself 
the utmost freedom and plainness of speech. In this 
I am justified by the supreme importance of the 
questions in dispute between us. On all these tre- 
mendous questions it is urgent that our nation should 
come to a decision. Our future security and pros- 
perity depend upon our giving a right answer to 
each one of these questions. 

Upon all these tremendous questions, you and I 
are in irreconcilable opposition. Now it matters 
little, my dear Wells, what theories and opinions get 
into your head, or into mine. The world's course is 
not guided by your theories and opinions, or by my 



A Challenge 263 

theories and opinions. The world's course is guided 
by great changeless laws and principles, that are 
everywhere and always in operation, that silently 
but irresistibly rule men with an iron compulsion, 
whether or not they are aware of it. At every 
moment of our lives, in every relationship of life, in 
the family, in the tribe, in the school, in the work- 
shop, in the office, in the city council, in the senate, 
in the state, in the international comity of nations, 
these changeless laws and principles incessantly 
repeat to every one of us their stern immitigable 
command, "This do, and thou shalt live." 

The world is turned upside down today, my dear 
Wells, because men have disregarded and disobeyed 
these merciless irrevocable laws and principles, and 
have followed your new kind of honesty, and what 
you call "modern ideas." It is a very old world, 
my dear Wells. Men have not lived in it all these 
hundreds of thousands of years without discovering 
these primal changeless laws and framing them into 
codes. From of old these laws have been known, 
have been more or less obeyed, have guided the 
usages of all civilized societies, and have kept the 
world more or less in order. Men and nations may 
dodge and disobey these changeless laws and princi- 
ples for a time, and for a time escape the conse- 
quences. But they take their terrible revenge, alike 
upon the innocent and guilty. 

For instance, Lenin has just discovered that there 



264 My Dear Wells 

are certain immutable economic laws which govern 
the distribution of wealth, and the allotment of food 
and the necessaries and comforts of life. He is 
reported to say that agreements with bourgeois 
governments are indispensable. He is giving a 
grant of concessions to capitalists and to farmers, 
"who must own their own land! 1 What damnable 
heresy is this, that a private person shall be allowed 
to own land, especially if he has worked for it and 
earned it! Allowed to own land!! Land of all 
things ! Then there is reason to hope that men will 
be allowed to own other desirable things which they 
have worked for, and have practised self-denial to 
obtain! But what will be the end of these conces- 
sions to common sense? 

After remarking that no one was so mad as to 
expect a world revolution, Lenin screwed up his eyes 
in a comical manner and said, "I fear I have become 
respectable !" Well may you call him an "amazing 
little man." With some droll histrionic talent too ! 
"I fear I have become respectable. " A most effec- 
tive curtain line on that act of Bolshevism. 

"Comrades!" we hear him saying, "we have had 
our three years' little picnic. Twenty millions or more 
of you have perished in dreadful misery ! Millions 
more of you have been shot down without trial or 
tortured and imprisoned and hunted to exile, despair 
and death! Twenty millions of you are starving 
today ! Comrades, I now begin to see the absurdity 



A Challenge 265 

of our theories ! We will end this act of our grand 
economic international burlesque, and return to the 
realities of ordinary bourgeois existence" ; adding in 
an aside to Trotsky, "or pretend to return to them, 
until we have got enough capital out of the bourgeois 
governments to keep our red army of four million 
men in the field." 

It is here necessary for me again to remind you, 
my dear Wells, that in one of those rare glimmerings 
and perceptions of facts which you do occasionally 
get, you stamped Lenin as a "rotten little incessant 
intriguer, who ought to be killed by some moral 
sanitary authority." 

A grave responsibility rests upon the English 
government for giving recognition to one whom, in 
a lucid interval, you so accurately described. No 
man, no nation, no government ever palters and 
compromises with manifest wrong, without risking 
the consequence of a terrible revenge from the 
operation of these changeless irrevocable laws. 
For, unlike your theories and your modern ideas, 
these changeless irrevocable laws do work, and do 
govern us, and do in one way or the other, constantly 
affirm their authority over us. 

Certainly our hearts will heave a deep sigh of 
relief at the mere prospect that the hapless Russian 
masses will be delivered from the worst of tyran- 
nies, the mad tyranny of false theories, the murder- 
ous despotism of false ideas. But what of the huge 



266 My Dear Wells 

national debt that Russia owes to hard set, impov- 
erished, thrifty France? Is France, mutilated, dev- 
astated, depopulated France, with her ruined indus- 
tries — France that is still crushed and staggering 
under the blows that she bore for Western civiliza- 
tion^ — is France to be cheated alike by German 
duplicity, and by Russian frank dishonesty? Russia, 
with her illimitable resources, will well be able, under 
sane government in the future, to repay the debt she 
owes to France. Is that debt to be enforced, or 
frankly repudiated by Russia ? The clearest, earliest 
declaration on this crucial question is demanded from 
the English government. A secure and prosperous 
France is the first assurance for a secure and pros- 
perous British Empire, and for the peace of Western 
Europe. A cheated, bankrupt France is an assur- 
ance of immeasurable trouble and insecurity for 
England, and of perpetual disorder and dread of 
war. What has the English government to say 
about the repudiation of the Russian national debt? 
Meantime, my dear Wells, you have announced 
that you will not argue with me. Instead of arguing 
with me, you call me an "out-and-out liar," a "silly 
ranter," an "excited imbecile." Your theories and 
views are widely held in England today. We have 
amongst us a group of busy writers, who, like your- 
self, are "thinking for" large masses of our fellow 
citizens, and who, like yourself, always "think" and 
write against their own country. Since you find 



A Challenge 267 

yourself unable to argue with me on these life or 
death questions, cannot you find some champion 
who will carry on the fight for you? The main 
questions upon which I have joined issue with you 
are these: 

( 1 ) The necessity of upholding the integrity, 
solidarity, and indissolubility of the British Empire 
as one of the chief guarantees against world disorder 
and anarchy. 

(2) The impossibility of establishing any form 
of Collectivism without destroying all social order 
whatsoever. 

(3) The impossibility of organizing any work- 
able scheme of Collectivist finance. 

(4) The necessity of a clear recognition of the 
rights of private property, as the only means of 
rewarding industry and ability. 

(5) The palpable falsehood of affirming that all 
rich and all powerful men are dishonestly "inter- 
cepting the wealth and influence that other men 
have created for mankind." 

(6) The deadly mischief of making such palpably 
false statements, and thereby inflaming class hatred 
at a moment when the safety of every man, woman 
and child in Great Britain, and especially of our 
working classes, depends upon our healing all our 
divisions, and standing together in the closest unity 
of national aim and effort. 

I repeat that these are life or death questions. 



268 My Dear Wells 

Upon each of them, I am as strongly opposed to you 
as life to death, as white to black, as right to wrong. 
Upon each of them, our nation is called upon to make 
a quick and clear decision. I have no poor ambition 
to gain a verbal victory over you, my dear Wells. 
I am only desirous that our nation should arrive at a 
right decision on all these questions. I have been 
very plain-spoken and very explicit in making my 
statements and charges, and have supported them by 
a chain of carefully connected argument. Surely 
amongst all the writers who hold your theories, 
there is some one of them who can offer me a rea- 
soned reply, instead of abuse and vasty vagueness? 
He shall find me very eager to give up any wrong 
opinion that I may be holding. I will not call him 
a "liar" or an "excited imbecile." I will thank him 
very courteously for putting me right. I throw 
down my glove. Who picks it up? You, sir? Or 
you ? Or you ? 

Again let me assure you, my dear Wells, that I 
am not moved by any feeling of personal animosity 
against you. In your last communication, you wrote 
of my "incurable grudge," my "everlasting hooting 
and lying," my "dreary hostility," and of my heart 
being "full of malice." My dominant feeling to- 
wards you, my dear Wells, is plainly revealed by 
the tone of many of the lighter passages in these 
letters. That dominant feeling which I need not 
more clearly indicate, is largely mingled with amuse- 



A Challenge 269 

ment. It is therefore quite incompatible with any 
feeling of personal malice. 

I do indeed believe that you are doing a great 
amount of mischief by your loose and confused think- 
ing and your vasty vagueness. Before I began this 
controversy, I wrote you, and gave you my reasons 
for starting it. Your theories aim at the breaking 
up of the British Empire. I hope it will not seem 
incredible to you that this is a sufficient reason for 
my attacks upon them. You prove yourself a bad 
judge of character, my dear Wells, when you ascribe 
to personal malice what is only the performance of 
my duty as a good citizen of my country. 

One evil of all this loose thinking upon these 
matters is that we blind ourselves to the plain stern 
fact that this will never be a world in which every- 
body can be made happy and comfortable, even 
under the best forms of government; even if we 
could all suddenly change our natures, and from this 
time constantly study to do our duty to our neigh- 
bours. There would still be collisions of interest 
amongst men, amongst the different social classes, 
amongst the different nations and races of the earth. 
Competition and cooperation in endlessly shifting 
forms, are one of those many balancing and com- 
pensating alternations by which Nature governs us, 
and disposes of us, and forces us to go the way she 
wants us to go. If we once get a firm hold of this 
universal law of balancing alternations, this per- 



270 My Dear Wells 

petual reversal and play of catabolic and anabolic 
forces in every social organism, we shall get a better 
apprehension of how little and how much we can 
do to remedy social wrongs and abuses. By our 
removal of one social wrong we often cause a re- 
action that sets up a greater wrong than the one we 
have tried to remedy. 

A worse evil of all this loose thinking upon these 
matters, is that by adopting wrong remedies, (such 
as burning down employers' shops) we cease to 
search for true effective cures for such social and 
political abuses and wrongs as can be cured or 
palliated. 

In some respects our present civilization is the 
most hideous that the world has ever known. There 
are many things in it that sadly need to be changed 
and some things that need to be destroyed. I do 
not seek to perpetuate the present social order. It 
must inevitably submit to vast changes. Let those 
changes be made in obedience to the changeless laws 
which underlie all social order. Whether a better 
general state of world civilization can be gradu- 
ally brought about by our conscious efforts, 
will depend upon our getting a true knowledge of 
the laws of social structure, and very much more 
upon our getting them obeyed by the masses of 
mankind. I propose as soon as I can find time to 
these fundamental laws that underlie all social order, 
have a further talk with you, my dear Wells, upon 



A Challenge 271 

and that are always operative and compulsive upon 
every community, whether or not we are ignorant 
of them, whether or not we obey them. 

You decline to argue about them with me ? Well 
then, I shall again have to carry on our next con- 
troversy all alone. I daresay I shall be equal to it, 
and that I shall again be able to find arguments for 
both of us. 

Yours in the meantime, 

Henry Arthur Jones. 

New York City, 

March 30, 1921. 



